


the world keeps turning (it's us that just stand still)

by olivemartini



Series: the word keeps turning (it's us that just stand still) [1]
Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Arya's older, F/M, canon comliant, gendry centric, like seventeen, reunion scene
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-09
Updated: 2019-04-23
Packaged: 2019-08-21 03:44:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 14
Words: 40,384
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16568993
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/olivemartini/pseuds/olivemartini
Summary: The first time Gendry walks through the gates of Winterfell, Arya didn't even talk to him.She had her reasons for that. Mostly because it was an overwhelming sight, all these unsullied and wildlings and redeemed royals trampling in through the courtyard behind the King in the North and the Mother of Dragons, and Gendry was just lurking in the middle, his war hammer swinging at his side.  It would have been easy to pretend that she didn't seem him, if only they hadn't locked eyes and his mouth had twitched into half a smile before Arya had torn herself away from him and towards her brother.  Gendry wouldn't have been able to tell that she wasn't telling the truth.  Among so many other things, Arya has become quite the excellent liar.





	1. Chapter 1

The first time Gendry walks through the gates of Winterfell, Arya didn't even talk to him.

She had her reasons for that. Mostly because it was an overwhelming sight, all these unsullied and wildlings and redeemed royals trampling in through the courtyard behind the King in the North and the Mother of Dragons, and Gendry was just lurking in the middle, his war hammer swinging at his side.  It would have been easy to pretend that she didn't see him, if only they hadn't locked eyes and his mouth hadn't twitched into half a smile before Arya had torn herself away from him and towards her brother.  Gendry wouldn't have been able to tell that she wasn't telling the truth.  Among so many other things, Arya has become quite the excellent liar.

( _Littlefinger had told me the trouble was that I couldn't lie,_ Sansa had told her, when they were standing over the spot where his body had fallen, specks of his blood still staining Arya's wrist.   _That it was a court full of liars and every single one of them better than me._

 _Funny, how that turned out,_ Arya had told her, staring down at the spot where the blood had been thickest.  She was running out of names on her list.   _You here, and him gone._

 _Yes,_ Sansa said, her hands on her ribs where some phantom injury still pained her, maybe a memory or maybe a scar.  Arya doesn't ask.  She never will.  Doesn't have to- she had heard the stories about what Ramsay had done, had sat outside of Sansa's chambers with Needle in hand while she listened to her scream herself awake from her nightmares.   _Funny, that._ )

"Jon!"  She could hear her mother's voice in her head, telling her that this wasn't proper, that she was not allowed to have such familiarity with the king, even if it was her brother.  That she had to greet the other lords and ladies that had come with him first before she could move onto reunions, and that she certainly wasn't supposed to ignore the Dragon Queen in favor of barreling into her brothers chest and letting him twirl her around in the air like she was ten years old again, like they were right back to how things were before this whole bloody mess started.  "You're home."

"And you."  He was kneeling to look at her.  Arya had thought she had gotten taller but she was still so much smaller than him.  Half of her wanted to tell him to stand up, that it's not fit for a king to dirty his breeches over his little sister.  But the other part knew that that was never going to be the kind of king that Jon wanted to be.  "You're okay."  His face is screwed up and he is squinting at the sun, and Arya steps back a little bit, enough to see the queen watching them with a smile on her face. "You're safe now."

 _Do you think I was waiting on you to keep me safe?_ He had made her a sword, put it in her hand.  Arya wonders if he had heard stories of the things she had done.  What he thought about a room full of Frays lying facedown in their pudding.    _Do you think that I've been sitting here, fearful and waiting?  Fear cuts deeper than swords, and I have seen too many monsters too be afraid of anything men might bring to my door._

"And you're a king."  Her brother, her bastard brother who was always too angry for his own good, a king.  Sansa, in charge of Winterfell.  Bran a prophet.  And her... she's something.  Not a soldier.  Not just a killer- the things she does is a bit more elegant for that.  Arya supposes she'll just have to wait for someone else to tell her what she is.  "The King in the North."

"Not anymore."  He turns away from her and to the Queen standing beside him, and Arya thinks for a half a second that this, standing in front of her, is what royalty is supposed to look like.  The crown is not something that you can take by force or steal by cunning, not something that can be given to you.  It's something that sits in your bones.  "I bent the knee."  He raises his voice, louder, to address the people that have surrounded them and to reach Sansa and Bran standing at the door.  "I've bent the knee to the rightful heir to the Iron Throne."

And that.

That changes things just a bit.

 

 

 

The first time she  _talks_ to Gendry was two weeks later.

A long time.  Too much time.  There had been other opportunities, but Arya hadn't taken them, even when Gendry's eyes were tracking her around the room and it was more of a bother to stay away from him than to come close.  

"I told you."  He's bent over an anvil, and it's such a sense of de ja vu that it punches her in the stomach, reminds her of Harrenhal and Tywin and the screams coming from the Tickler's cage, how close they both came to never making it out.  

Gendry doesn't look at her at first, but he does pause, then hangs the new sword he made with the others.  He's been working non stop since he got here.  Together, Theon and Ramsay had made sure that there were no other smiths to help him.  "Told me what?"

"That you could come work in the forges at Winterfell.  You got angry at me, then."  He left her, right about then.  Weeks and weeks and weeks of promising  _together_ and  _I'll be your family_ and  _milady, you'll always be my lady,_ and Arya had been stupid enough to believe them.  And yet here he was. And more impossibly, here she was.  "But you made it here anyways."

"We need swords."  He's got new scars.  Arya wants to ask him how it happened, both because she doesn't like that there were parts of him she didn't get to know about and also because she thought she might need to add a few more names to the list.  "Got the fighters, now we need the swords."

"I heard we needed fire."  He had been past the wall.  Gendry had seen things- dragons and dead men walking and cold so bitter he could probably still feel it stinging his skin.  Maybe that's why he liked the forge so much.  At least in there he was always warm.  "Lots of fire."

"Whatever you heard," He said, shaking his head, his eyes haunted by things that she wants to take away from him, "it doesn't even come close."   

 

 

 

 It's better, after that.

They're not back to where she remembered them being, with the  _milady_ 's and  _together_ and  _family,_ but now that Arya has had time to think about it, maybe they weren't ever like that.  Maybe that was just something she made up in her head to get her through the rough times, a day dream to think about at night.  Maybe the image of Gendry that she's kept in her head all these years was just a mirage and now she was going to have to get used to the reality in front of her.  After all, she was young the last time they had been together.  Young and stupid.

( _But that's not true,_ the other part of herself, the younger part, kept reminding her.   _You remember.  He teased you because he thought you were a girl and he protected you then, before he knew you were highborn, carried your share on that long march when you kept stumbling under the weight and teased you about your hair and fought for the spot closest to the fire, not for himself, but for you, because you were always so, so cold.  Remember?  And then he found out you were highborn and nothing much changed other than the fact that he called you milady and stopped talking so vulgar, made Hot Pie stop talking bad, too, and then there was that one night where he found you crying in the trees and held you until it was over._ _It was real-_ together  _and_ family  _and_ you'll be my lady  _were all real.  It was you who ruined it, by wanting to go places where he knew he didn't belong, where he couldn't follow.  It's you whose to blame._ )

That's what she's thinking about, when she's sitting at that long table listening to Jon and Daenerys and all their many attendants draw up the battle plan, count resources and rations until Arya's head was spinning.  She was there because she was a Stark and nothing more, even though everyone knew that she wasn't any help with that kind of fighting, so she just sat in her chair and watched Gendry as he watched everyone else.  

It ends up being a good thing, the watching, because when the servants come in with the bread and wine Arya was the one to notice, and she was the one who saw the man ( _the one she didn't recognize, and that was strange, now, to have someone here whose name she didn't know_ ) get a little too close for comfort.  

"Your Grace," Her voice is too small and Arya is too slow, but Daenerys still looks up to her, a smile playing on her lips, and then Arya sees the knife come out behind her ( _how stupid,_ she thought,  _to try and kill the Mother of Dragons with a dagger, but Arya supposes she has done more with less_ ) and there is no time for talking.  There is only one scream from another servant, and Missandei is shoving her queen behind her and leaving herself exposed, and all those useless men are fumbling at their sides for swords that they will not reach in time.

But it doesn't matter.

Arya had learned to be fast.  She had learned to watch.  And before anyone else had even moved, she was across the table, a barrier between Missandei and this man, her dagger thrust up into his neck.

 _Don't look so surprised,_ she thinks, right before the man's legs turn to jelly and he slumps down to the ground and his weight falls on top of her.  It's the one part she can't handle- their last dying breaths rattling right into her ears, their dead weight pressing down on top of her, its own form of suffocation, their blank eyes staring at her as she dies.  Men can yank their swords free and kick the bodies away, but Arya isn't strong enough.  

"Hey."  Gendry reaches her first.  The others are all swarming around Jon and the Queen- Jon who is fighting to get to her and the Queen who is staring at her with something between fear and admiration and Arya just standing there with this man dying on her shoulder.  She was starting to bow down under his weight.  "Hey."  Gendry grabs him by the shoulders and yanks him away, throws him on the floor with a thud so much louder than the one Littlefinger had made, and her dagger goes with him, slipping out of her hand to clatter onto the floor.  "Are you alright?"

She doesn't answer.  He had seen her kill before but that was in a scarier time when there were not other men around to defend her, not when she was standing in the middle of a war council with blood staining her arms and splattered onto her face.  It's not a good look for anyone, let alone the little girl that he used to protect.

"She will be fine."  Melisandre.  The Red Woman.  Jon had thrown her out but Daenerys had let her back in.  Her presence makes Gendry shrink back.  This woman must have done something terrible to make Gendry walk away Arya when she had almost died.  She makes a mental note to ask, and thinks about adding The Red Woman's name to her never ending list.  "This one has tasted death before."

 

 

 

He finds her in the godswood later, Ghost snapping at her heels, trying to edge her back into the castle. 

"You're hurting the trees." 

"I'm fighting them."  Arya spun around, and before he could even blink she had her sword at his throat.

"It's just me, Arya."  He raised his hands in surrender.  "Just Gendry."

"I know." She through the sword onto the ground, panting, and knelt by one of the streams to splash water up into her face.  It was a good time to stop.  Her arms were aching- she would not ruin good steel by using Needle to chop apart branches, but this sword was so much heavier than she was used to.  "That's why I didn't kill you."

His eyes flicker down to her hands, then back up to her face.  "You have a lot of practice with that?"  He reaches out and grabs at her hand, his thumb rubbing over the callouses on her palms like he knew where they were.  Maybe he did.  He had seen them when they were only blisters, after all.  "Killing."

"You know I do."   _I wasn't lying, back on the road to the Wall.  I lied about a lot of things but not about that boy I killed, that fat little stable boy who was too stupid for his own good.  I killed people who were on my list and people who weren't, people who wanted to kill me and people who were just in my way.  I learned how to make it hurt, and how to make it gentle.  I learned it like it was an art, like a dance._ "You must have heard the stories."

"I have.  We stayed in a lot of taverns on the way up here."  His eyes were darker than she remembered.  Softer.  Or maybe that was just the light.  "People talk."

"Then why ask me."

"Because I want to hear it from you." 

"You don't.  They aren't pretty stories."  His hand had moved from her wrist to her face, his thumb almost touching the corner of her mouth but not quite.  "Whatever you heard," She said, quoting him, and by the look in his eyes she knows that he remembers that day in the forge, "it doesn't even come close."

"Then tell me.  I've got stories, too."  She doesn't seem to have a say when it comes to Gendry.  Everyone else -her mother, her brothers, her sister, the hound, the Faceless men- everyone else she had raged against every order they had thought to give her, but with him she doesn't even question it, just lets him pry her fingers away from the sword and lead her to sit against the tree, like he's a puppet and he's got the strings.  She doesn't want to look weak but it feels so good to let someone else make the decisions.  "We could tell each other."

"Okay.  But,"  She felt small again.  Young and afraid and stupid, always acting so brave in front of people who are bigger than her, and Gendry always seeing right through her.  "You have to promise not to be afraid of me."

"Afraid of you, my lady?"  He says it proper now, but it's still so nice to hear that it brings tears to her eyes.  "I don't think that's possible."

 

 

 

She tells him.

Everything, right from the beginning, because that was really the only way to tell it and even with everything they had shared, there were parts of herself that she had kept hidden, kept so closed off from him and she's so tired of hiding.

About Micah the butcher's son, how it wasn't her hand that held the sword but it was her that killed him, how she had to send Nymeria running.  Her dancing master, how holding that sword was the only time she felt at home and how he had died for her, running out into the courtyard and seeing the only people she could count on for protecting sprawled dead on the ground and that stupid, stupid stable boy who thought he could trade her for a bit of extra bread and she had ran him through with the sword without even thinking about it.

About Jhagar and his three names.  About that one man on the road that she had told no one else about, how he thought she was easy prey and she taught him differently.  About the faceless men, how she had done everything they asked and how they took everything from her and she ended up stealing it back, stole her sight and her freedom and walked away with the blood still drying under her nails because she hadn't had the chance to wash it off.

About a room full of Freys and how she got the last word.

About Littlefinger.

And he tells her things, too.

About Stannis, and the Red Woman, and needing a king's blood for power and the leeches, that they were  _everywhere,_ how scared he was that they were going to kill him, how stupid he was, how it  _hurt,_ and then how Davos had stuck him in a boat and told him to row, never stop rowing, the way he thought he would capsize and drown and the waves made him sick during his long days out on the water, and then Jon.

Going with Jon, fighting with him, how he thought he knew for the first time in his life what it meant to be highborn, to be a hero, to be a knight.  About how cold it was and he could never remember what was like to be warm, but even with all his time in the forge he can still remember what it was like to freeze.  About the dead man, how he thought he was going to die out there and rise again, their electric blue eyes and half rotted bodies.

And the dragons.

He loved the dragons.

"You see?"  He's still holding her hand.  Arya wishes that her mother were still alive, that she could go back and tell her that she was right, that maybe there were some boys that weren't so stupid after all.  One boy.  "I'm not afraid of you.  There are things much scarier than you."

"I won't let them hurt you.  I won't let that woman near you."  Her hand was on her sword again.  Ghost was growling at the both of them.  "Nothing's going to harm you if I can help it."

"You don't have to do that."  He pulled away from her and it hurt.  "I can take care of myself."

"You shouldn't have to.  Not on your own."

"And whose going to take care of you?"

"You are.  We take care of each other.  Family, remember?"  She's close to crying.  Arya can't remember ever crying, not since her father died.  Tears were for other girls, softer girls who had time to be weak.  "You promised."

"You're back with your family now."

"You're my family.  You said so.  You promised, remember?"  And then, even though this wasn't how they do things, even though she had never said these words to him before, she adds, "You have to be my family.  I  _command_ it, do you understand, Gendry?  We take care of each other."

He's smiling.  It's too cold to sit here and smile, but maybe after all his time beyond the wall, this feels warm to him. "Whatever you say, milady."

 

 

 


	2. Chapter 2

The men are training.

Arya wants to be with them, but can't, both because she hasn't ever quite managed to shake her mother's warnings about what was and wasn't proper, and also because none of the men down there would ever dare strike the sister of their lord, even when playing pretend.  It wouldn't be a real fight, and if it wasn't a real fight, it wouldn't be worth it.  Fighting against men who let her win would make her too sure, too slow.  It would take the fun out of it.

"They look good, don't they?"  Daenerys.  The dragon queen.  Her brother calls her Dany.  Her brother also happens to be half in love with her.  "Proper soldiers."

"Yes, your grace."  Arya inclines her head, but her eyes don't stray from the courtyard.  Her brother likes to oversee the training ( _likes the teaching. It seems like the men who are best at ruling are the ones who seem to hate the position most_ ), but he is busy with other matters today, and Gendry is handling it.  He calls out orders loud enough for Arya to hear them, and when someone does something he doesn't like, he knocks them down into the dirt.  But he always helps them back up.  She feels like that's an important distinction, but isn't really sure why.  "They're good men.  Strong men."

"And you?"  There's a smile on her lips.  The queen is always smiling at Arya.  Arya can't tell if it's a nice smile or one that just means the queen finds her amusing.  "Are you good at fighting?"

"Yes."  Too confident.  Much too confident of a tone too use while speaking to a queen.  "I could knock some of them down into the dirt."

"They're bigger than you."

"Slower."  Gendry looks up from the field, squints into the sun until he finds her and then raises a hand.  Arya watches him for another moment and then turns away from him to give her full attention to the queen.  "Heavier.  Stronger.  Doesn't make them better."

"Who taught you to fight?"

"Myself, at first.  Then a dancing master that my father found."  Thinking about Syrio hurts, and thinking about her father hurts more, so Arya pushes past it.  "Some Bravosi men, the hound for a time.  Brienne's helping, but mostly I train by myself."

"Would you like to train?"

"With who?"

"Anyone.  Your brother, one of my unsullied.  Those men down there."

"I wouldn't think it proper, your grace."  She wasn't arguing exactly, but she wasn't agreeing.  "A woman who fights."

"I expect some of them might say that about Brienne.  And I expect many more of them would say that about a woman who intends to rule.  But here we are."  It definitely is a smile this time, and Arya finds herself returning it, finds herself thinking that if this woman asked her to, she would bend the knee and hand over her sword to her service.  "Ruling.  Fighting."

"Would you let me fight?"  She had heard her brother talking.  He and Gendry and Tormund and Greyworm would huddle around their little tables and move the pawns around.  They would be on the move soon.  They would have to be, unless the fight would come to them.  "For you?  In your army?"

"No."  Arya isn't surprised.  "I don't think you'd be much good at that kind of killing."

Arya likes the way she talks about it. Killing.  When men talk about war, they use other words- fighting, justice, revenge.  It's not any of that.  It's only killing, only death.

"I could be good at other things."

"It probably wouldn't be honorable, the things that you would be good for."  

 _A girl lacks honor._ She had been told that before, a lifetime ago.  Her father had honor, and her mother, and so did Robb.  They were dead, and she was still standing.  She wasn't about to change her ways, not now that she had so many people to protect.  

"Some jobs need a hammer," She says, watching Gendry bring his up into the air and swing down inches away from the head of some farmer's son.  The boy screams and they all laugh.  Stupid, the things that men find amusing.  "Some just a needle."

 

 

 They meet in the kitchens.

It's late enough that all the cleaning is done for the night, but still early enough that no one has come in to start the morning fires.  It's just the two of them, her standing in the doorway and Gendry sitting up on one of the tables.  The cook would swat at him for that, high born or no.  

"You can come in, you know."  He doesn't turn around.  He's in a shirt so thin that she can see where the sweat made it stick to his skin, can imagine where the bones of his shoulders would be if she reached out to touch him.  She's finding more and more that she wants to reach out to touch him. Arya isn't sure what to make of that, and even less sure what Gendry would think of it, so she never says anything.  "I'm not going to bite."

She takes a few steps into the kitchens.  Arya didn't bring shoes even though it was cold, because she'd been taught that comfort should always come second to silence.  "How'd you know it was me?"

"I dunno."  Gendry shrugged, but doesn't turn to face her, leaving her to move beside him.  He's staring into the fire, hands stretching out to the fire like he wants to gather it into his palms.  "Just did."

They sit in silence for a while, watching the flames.  More and more people have started to watch the flames now, ever since people started listening to the Red Woman.  Ever since people saw the things that she could do and started to believe.  Arya still can't see anything.  She wonders if she'd be able to, if she just found it in herself to believe.

"Aren't you cold?"  He doesn't look cold.  Arya can never remember Gendry being cold.  He was always warm as a furnace- on the road to the wall, in the prison cells, when they hid out in stables and ditches and everything in between.  "It's freezing in here."

"I'm not."  He has to be.  The sweat was still drying on his skin.  Arya wants to ask him what had been so terrible to dream about that it drove him all the way down here, but doesn't.  Some things a person should get to keep to themselves.  "Nothing's cold anymore."  His hands are shaking.  It's just a little tremble, and even though there are times that Gendry had stood in front of her and said that she was stupid not to be afraid of dangerous things, she thinks this is the first time she'd really seen him show any fear.  "Not compared to up there."

The men that go beyond the wall always talk about it differently than other people.  They call it by different names, but never  _the north_ or  _beyond the wall._ They always talk about it like its something alive, something that has ears and can hear them all the way down there.

"Was it beautiful up there?"  She had heard about it a bit, from Tyrion.  None of the other men liked to talk about war ( _not of real war.  Some washed up warriors liked to talk about their glory days, but their stories were candy coated and dipped in sunshine, all about the glory, nothing about the gore.  Sansa used to swallow them up but Arya was never that stupid_ ) but Tyrion would talk all night if she asked, as long as she wanted.  One of his stories was about pissing off the edge of the world, and even though all the ladies had been scandalized and Sansa had half doubled over with laughter, after the crowd had calmed down he whispered to Arya that it was the most beautiful thing that he had ever seen.  "I know it was terrible, at the end.  But in the beginning."

"In the beginning-,"  He looks over at her, takes a stuttering breath, and then keeps talking.  "It was the most magneficient thing I'd ever seen in my life.  Fleabottom was always so terrible- so dirty and foul and loud, but there, it was... no one had ever been.  It was like nothing had ever walked there, would ever walk there, like we'd be swallowed up without a trace.  The snow was so white it hurt to look at and the sky was the best blue, like the way I always thought the ocean would look like, and the ice looked so much like glass that I kept half expecting to cut myself."  

"Were there godswoods?"  She's got her head resting on his shoulder, drowsy for the first time all night.  It normally takes her ages to fall asleep.  "Theon ruined all the godswoods here.  They're not the same."

"Yeah.  They had them up there.  But if the gods were watching, they weren't listening."  Gendry hand clenched into a fist, and Arya pried it back open, one finger at a time.  "No god would let a thing like that happen."

"I don't know.  They let men do terrible things all the time."  Cersei.  Illyn Pane.  The Tickler.  Walder Fray.  So many terrible men.  "I suppose it's no different up there."

 

 

The Hound is here.

It's like worlds colliding, all these people ending up at Winterfell that Arya had never thought she would ever see again.  She hadn't thought that she wanted him here and yet she found that she was a bit relieved to see his scarred face standing in the courtyard.

"What are you doing here?"  She sounds like a little girl when she talks to him.  The Hound looks down at her like she's a fly that he wants to swat.

"Fighting, I suppose."  He draws back the arrow and lets it fly.  Its a good shot, but still outside the bullseye.  Arya picks up her own bow and shoots it, right to the middle of the target, just to be annoying.  Some of the men laugh.  The Hound is one of them.  "Killing."

"Is it killing if they're already dead?"  She wasn't trying to be annoying.  She was just trying to find things to keep talking about that don't involve all those months on the road or her leaving him to die or Micah the butcher's boy.  And also, she had been honestly wondering, but the measter here wasn't as found of her questions as theirs had been when she was growing up.  "I feel like that part of the job's already done."

"Don't know.  Don't care.  I'm not fighting them."  He abandons the bow and points his arm towards the gate.  "I'm fighting whoever might be coming up from the south."

"Why not beyond the wall?"  She climbs up onto a bale of hay and sits there, legs swinging.  Somewhere, she can hear someone hammering away at an anvil, which means that somewhere, Gendry is working.  "You went with Jon the last time."

Arya hadn't asked him how it happened.  Jon never asked her how she had made it back, either.  It seems like neither of them want to ruin the image they have of the other.

"They fight those things back with fire.  You traveled with me a long time, girl."  He never calls her by her name.  She wonders if that was going to change, now that he was back in with other highborns and had to worry about stations and not just his sword.  Probably not. "Did I ever seem fond of fire?"

He stares down at her.  He had cut some of his hair away, and now she can see the full extent of the burn.  Arya had known pain, but probably nothing that came close to that.

"No."  He was looking at her like she was going to call him a coward.  Arya isn't about to.  She isn't stupid, for one thing.  And she isn't cruel.  "You didn't."

 

 

 

She's fighting with Tormund.

Arya had asked him to spar, and Jon had shrugged, but Tormund had just laughed and tore off another piece of his chicken leg.  "I don't spar, I fight."  He had sprayed food on the table when he spoke.  "And I don't fight little girls."

"I though your women were free, where you come from."  She had speared his dinner with her dagger just to be contrary and pulled it free from his hand.  "Heard that they can cut throats just as well as men.  Might be I'll be the one knocking you down into the dirt."

He had stared at her for a long moment, long enough that Arya thought that he had misjudged, but then he let out a roar of a laugh and slapped his hand down on the table, picking up his sword and leading the way out into the court yard.  

It was the first proper fight that Arya had had in ages.  She had trained with Brienne but being taught was always different than being attacked, even though from the outside they look like the same thing.  And this, with Tormund, was an attack.  It was a warm up act, a stretching before the real deal.  It felt like finding her balance again.  Until he knocks her down into the dirt.

"Hey!"  Someone is yelling, but Arya isn't really paying attention.  The fall had knocked her breath away, and she rolled on the ground, coughing, wheezing, nails digging into the dirt.  And when she finally dragged herself back onto her knees, she looked up to see Gendry waving his hammer at Tormund's face.

"Gendry!"  She slammed into him, the heels of her palms slamming into his ribs, right where she knew it would hurt.  She had seen the bruises the last time she went to visit him in the forge.  It might not have stopped him, but it did catch his attention long enough to see how angry she was.  "What are you doing?"

"He hit you.  He knocked you down."  His face was bright red, darting from her to Tormund, who he still had pinned to the wall.  "Men shouldn't hit ladies."

"I think I've told you before."  He doesn't call her his lady anymore.  At least not often, and only when they're alone.  Arya's mostly glad of it.  It makes her stomach squirm every time he says it.  "I'm not a lady."

"Like it or not," He turns away from Tormund and this time its her that he wants to fight with, though he leaves his hammer at his side.  "You are."

"Not a proper one.  I'm a girl, not a lady.  There's a difference."  She's got her sword up and Gendry barely has time to draw his in response before she presses forward.  "I don't sing.  I can't do any fancy stitches.  I don't plan on marrying some lord and living in a dirty old castle and only acting on his say so."  She catches him on the arm on accident and draws blood, and Gendry hisses in a breath before taking his turn at the attack, coming at her with so much of his strength that she's sure he would hurt her if she stumbles.  "I don't wear pretty dresses and I don't do my hair all fancy.  So what does that leave me?"

She drops her sword. He lets his fall, even though he's still weary.

"You're my lady."  His brow is furrowed, maybe like he's confused, maybe like he's in pain.  "I told you that."

"Stop saying that."  She was ripping things apart.  Arya was in the mood that used to come before her temper tantrums, right before she would yank on Sansa's hair or climbed up a tree and didn't come down no matter how her Septa begged or threatened.  "I'm no one's lady."

"Then what are you?"

"I don't know.  But I know I'm not going to count on anyone to protect me. Not even you.  Which means I need to train."  She shoved needle back into her belt.  "Which means I'm probably going to get knocked down into the dirt.  And you can't stop it, or I'll run out of people who'll be willing to train with me."

"I was only trying to help."

"You want to help?"  He looks so anxious, standing there.  And definitely in pain.  Arya feels bad about that.  She hadn't meant to hurt him.  Never him.  "Then go away."

 

 

He comes up to her later, during one of the many war councils that she finds herself sitting through.  Gendry is standing behind her, and leans down so he is short enough to whisper right in her ear.  Across the room, Jon is watching them.

"For the record, I like your hair.  With the braids.  And when you do it up in a knot all pretty."  She's got in down, today, tied back in two pigtails.  "You always look like a proper lady to me."

He's lying.  And teasing her.  And telling the truth, just a bit.

"I told you."  She elbows him in the ribs, but not hard.  Just enough to make him back away, give her room where she can take a breath.  "I'm not your lady."

He tugs onto one of her pigtails, and she squeals, a sound that carries across the stone floor.  "Whatever milady says."

 

 

 

"Do you...  you and Gendry."  Jon swallows, takes a deep breath, and stares at her like he wants her to give him an out.  "Are you- you know it can't happen."

She's stupid enough that she honestly doesn't know what he's talking about.

"You can't be together.  You're a Stark.  One of the last Starks.  And he's,"  It makes Jon looks like he was in pain, to have to say this.  "He's only a bastard."

"And so are you."

She meant it to hurt, and it does.  "You know that's not true."

"Something we only recently learned.  But I never cared about the rules back then."  Talks like this make her want to punch things.  "Funny that you start complaining now."

"I know it isn't fair.  Not to you.  But you have a duty,"

"A duty?"  She laughed.  It wasn't a pleasant sound.  "When have I ever done my duty?  You put a sword in my hand, Jon.  Tell me, did you do that and think that I would ever be able to make a good wife for some highborn lord?"

"That was before. Things are different-,"

"Meaning you screw a queen and start thinking you're special."  Something flickers over his face.  Hurt, definitely, but also surprise.  He hadn't thought she knew about that.  But Arya knows.  She watches.  She sees a lot of things that other people don't want her to know.  "But you're not.  You're still the bastard of Winterfell.   _Wear it like armor,_ remember?  Or have you forgotten?"

"I don't forget anything."

 _You know nothing, Jon Snow._ She had heard stories about Ygritte, but not from Jon.  If she really wanted to hurt him, she would say it, but Arya doesn't.  He wasn't doing this to be mean.  He even thinks he's being kind.

"I didn't think I'd have a home to come back to.  Didn't think I'd have a family.  He's the family I chose, do you understand?"

"I do.  Better than anyone, I do."  His eyes are soft.  She doesn't remember him being quite this gentle.  He was always so angry.  Arya only noticed it now that it was gone.  "But-,"

"Relax, Jon."  She wants to call him Snow just to get under his skin, but finds she's too exhausted for it.  "I doubt Gendry wants me anyways."

Jon tries to reach for her, but Arya is already gone.

 

 

The bells sound at midnight.

It only takes Arya a few moments to spring out of bed and get dressed, but by the time she makes it down to the courtyard, it had already come alive. There were men and horses stampeding around, each of them fighting each other to make it to where they needed to be, but Arya was only looking for one person.

(She doesn't look for Jon.  He had said his good byes with her beforehand, just in case he would ever have to leave quickly.  And anyways, he's already sitting on the back of one of the dragons, and Arya isn't quite confident enough to approach them yet.  They had met each other's eyes when she first came into the courtyard and he had stopped barking orders long enough to raise a hand in greeting, and she had raised her hand back, the only conversation they would get.  She's just going to have to trust him when he says that he's going to come back.)

"Gendry!"  He's already on horseback, barking orders at the men who had been placed under his command.  He looks so beautiful that it hurts to look at him.  "Gendry!"

"Arya."  He slips off his horse and doesn't bother handing off the reins to anyone, just runs to her and grabs her in his arms.  He's so much stronger than she had thought, and he holds her so tight he actually lifts her off the ground.  "You're here."

"Of course I'm here."  She wants to kiss him.  It's a wild thought, one she might even have acted on if there weren't so many people around.  It's probably best that she didn't.  Truth be told, Arya had no idea how to go about doing that.  "I'm coming with you."

"No.  No.  Your brother said no. Arya."  He was pleading with her.  Begging her.  Not commanding her.  He knows her too well to even try.  "The  _queen_ said no."

"I don't care."   She was crying.  Arya's not sure she'd ever cried during a good bye before.  "I'm not going to let you go alone."

"I won't be alone-,"

"I'm not letting you go without  _me._ Together.  That's what we said."  She really is crying.  It's a horribly indecent thing to do, but Gendry doesn't seem bothered by it.  If anything, it just makes him hold her tighter.  "I need to be there to protect you."

"And I need to be able to know you're safe.  Do you understand?"  He's kneeling in front of her.  "I'll be okay, just as long as I know you're here."

"And you think I don't want to know that about you?"

"It's not the same,"  He says, pushing her away, and Arya would have ran back to him if it hadn't been for the Hound grabbing her by the shoulders and holding her back. It's the same kind of grip that had been around her when the man from the wall tried to stop her from seeing her father's beheading.  "It'll be alright, Arya."

"You have to come back."  She was still crying.  Pathetic.  She did manage to shake off the hound, though, running to stand at Gendry's side while he climbs back onto his horse.  "Promise me you'll come home."

"As my lady commands." 

"This isn't a joke, Gendry."  She holds onto his hand one more time, and even though it feels like a risky thing to do, she presses her lips down onto his knuckles, once, twice, before the Hound starts to pull her away again.  "You have to be careful."

"I will.  I promise.  Arya."  He looks like he's going to get off his horse again but then holds himself back.  "I'm not going to leave you again."

 _You might not have a choice,_ she thinks, but the horns were sounding and the dragons were taking flight and all the men were looking to him for orders, so Arya nods, watches Gendry spin his horse around and head towards the gates, and she sags down to the ground, forcing the Hound to take her weight, watching him go until she cannot see him anymore.


	3. Chapter 3

It's a full three weeks before he comes back.

Arya had spent all of it in a state of rising agitation.  No one had been able to come her down, not Sansa, not Bran, not even the Queen.

Only the Hound.

"Relax."  They were sparring.  He likes to fight, the Hound, anyone and anything.  He doesn't care how tiny she is and he doesn't care if she's a girl.  Arya's got a collection of bruises now.  Sansa had pitched a fight the first time she saw them, but the Hound had just mumbled something about little birds needing to learn to defend themselves, and she shut up.  "He'll come home."

"How do you know that?"  She doesn't like false comforts.  Doesn't like hearing Gendry's name in anyone's mouth but her own.  

"I fought with him.  He swings that hammer pretty damn hard.  He's probably up there crushing the spines of all those dead cunts right as we speak.  Don't worry, girl."  He pats her on the shoulder a little clumsily, like he's not used to comfort but he's trying.  "Your boy's a tough bugger to kill."

"He's not my boy."  She doesn't know why she keeps protesting this.  First with Sansa, then Tyrion, then that conversation with Jon.  And now the Hound, of all people.  "He's not my anything."

"Really?"  The Hound raises an eyebrow.  Or at least she thinks he does.  He's using the side of his face that's all burned up, so it's a little hard to tell.   "Maybe someone should tell him that."

"Believe me,"  She says, picking up the sword and thinking all those times he's teased her and smiled down at her and how he keeps insisting on calling her his lady.  "I've tried."

 

 

 

They come home at dawn.  

Arya wants to see Gendry the moment she walks through the gates, but doesn't, because first she has to run and help the queen down from her dragon, and then she was joining Sansa to hug Jon, and then the Hound was barking at her to run to the measter and find milk of the poppy, as much as could be spared, because they were going to need buckets full for the sorry looking lot that had just stumbled through the gates.

She still hadn't found Gendry, but she couldn't find it in herself to say no, so she barreled up the steps and got the milk of the poppy, and then she helped hold men down while they lost their arms and legs and feet, and she held cups of water up to their mouths of men too weak to even lift their own heads.  It keeps her busy, and soon the ground turns muddy with all the blood and wine that had been spilled, and eventually she was able to slip away.

In the end, Gendry was the one who found her, the two of them standing on top of the wall and watching the sunset.

"I thought you might come find me."  She can't tell if he's teasing her or not.  "But the hound told me you were a bit busy."

"I wanted to find you.  After I was done.  But the horses-,"  The horses were the worst part.  Men sounds like animals when they die, but the horses- somehow the horses sound more human than she had thought possible.  They scream when they're in pain, and they scream when the soldiers show them what they think is mercy.  She had to leave the courtyard because she couldn't stand the smell of it all.  They're killing the wounded horses and butchering them for food.  They can't spare the meat, not now that winter was so close and their resources spread so thin.  "I can't stand it."

Gendry nods.  His hand is close enough to hers that they are touching, his pinky overlapping hers.  "You're covered in blood."

"And you aren't."  He wasn't.  She had checked, scanned him for any wounds he might be trying to hide, but it seems that Gendry had done what he had promised.  He came home safe.  

"Those things don't bleed."  

He was shivering again.  Maybe he was still cold.  Or maybe he was still afraid.

"What was it like?"  She wasn't sure that she wanted to know, but she had to ask.  "This time."

"Better.  I knew what to expect.  And we weren't as alone.  I knew there was a way out, if I wanted it."  He wouldn't take it.  Arya wished he was the type of man who would, but then again, she probably wouldn't like him that much if he did.  "And worse."

"Why worse?"

"You remember how they killed the dragon?"  Gendry swallowed, hard.  "Turns out people aren't the only thing they can bring back from the dead."  Arya didn't move.  She stood like a statue, and closed her eyes.  A dragon.  They've got a dragon.  "The wall is going to fall.  They're going to come."  It scares her, and he can tell, because suddenly they're holding hands again.  "They're going to come for all of us."

 

 

There's a celebration.

It's not a feast.  They don't have enough food for a feast, and the northern lords and ladies aren't as stupid as the ones from King's Landing, who spend more than they earn and think that they're owed it because of some birthright that no one cares about.  Here, they're made from stronger stuff, but still, they do their best.

There's music.  And dancing.  And ale and wine, because if there's one thing that this place has in abundance, it's wine.  Tyrion had made sure of that.

Sansa had forced her to wear a dress.  Arya only wears it because she knows that Sansa had made it and designed it herself.  It's simple, just like Sansa knew she would like it, with a pattern of direwolves embroidered around the waist. "It's got a pocket.   Right here."  Sansa had yanked on the skirt to show Arya where it was.  "Big enough for needle.  It'll make dancing awkward, but I expect that won't be much of a problem, anyways."

So she had worn it.  And she sat and let Sansa curl her hair like she had always begged Arya to let her, and when Arya looked in the mirror, she could have almost sworn that she looked like a proper lady.

But she knew better.

It was only other people who refused to learn.

"My lady."  Gendry bowed his head and held out his hand to her.  "Would you care for a dance?"

 _I'd love to,_ is what she wants to say, but what comes out of her mouth is, "I don't dance."  Gendry's face falls and somewhere behind her, Arya can hear the Hound snicker.  "I mean.  I don't dance all that well."

"It's alright."  He was still holding out his hand to her.  "I never learned how."  She wasn't going to say no to him, and he knows it.  "I won't know if you're good or bad. And either way, I'll be worse than you.  We can just blame it all on me having two left feet."

It's not really a decision to accept, but she does, standing and moving out into the middle of the room.  It's a slower dance, thank god, which means that they don't have to do much.  "There are dances where you have to know the steps.  Did you know that?"  She wasn't sure why she was talking about dancing.  There were so many more interesting things to talk about, but she couldn't think any of them, not when his face was so close to hers and his hands were so tight against her waist.  "I sat through all the lessons.  I should have learned.  But I didn't.  I refused. Just because I didn't  _like_ it."

She thought she was being brave, back then.  Strong.  Now she knows she was just being stupid.

"So you were always this stubborn?"  Gendry smiles, but gently, like he gets it.  She's not sure he does, but she appreciates the effort.  "It's okay.  I don't know the steps either.  At least I'll have someone to talk to when I have to sit out a few songs." He tugs on her hair.  Arya's starting to think that it's a sign of affection, which is slightly confusing, because Jon does the same thing.  "And for the record, I like how stubborn you are."

They rotate on the spot, and the song changes.  It's a new one.  There are all kinds of new songs she doesn't know.  Some of them are bad.  This one is good.  "Do you?"

"And I like your dress."  He moves his thumb over one of the direwolves.  There's six of them, one for each of her siblings.  She's almost certain Sansa did that on purpose.  "It looks pretty on you."

"It looks pretty because Sansa made it."  Arya felt stupid, standing there in this dress, like she was playing pretend and everyone knew it but her.  Like they were all in on the joke.  "That's all."

"Don't."  He looks a little angry.  Arya isn't sure why.  "You always look pretty."

"I look like a boy."

"No," Gendry says, and laughs.  She can feel the sound echo in his chest.  "Trust me.  You don't."

Arya doesn't really know what to do with that.  She's almost glad when the song stops and changes to one that they don't know how to dance to.

Almost.

 

 

Arya understands most aspects of the war, but there's one that she doesn't- the rewards.

Her father had explained it to her, once. How after a battle you had to reward the men who had served you especially well.   _It's a way of saying thank you.  Give them land, give them castles, arrange a marriage- it shows how valued you are._

Arya had been too young to understand.  Too young to realize that in time, she might be the other half of the marriage that he was arranging, a thank you present tied off with a neat little bow.   _So you trick them?_

 _No,_ her father had said, shaking his head, trying to make her understand what he needs and not quite getting there.   _You do it because you owe them.  Because you value them.  Because they risked their lives and their lands, and for that, men deserve to get something more in return than a shake of the hand._

This war is no different.  There are boys to turn into squires, men to be knighted, titles to hand out and lands to parcel apart and castles to hand out.  And there's no shortage of them. At the moment, high born men and women are dropping like flies, with leaves Daenerys and Jon with a lot of empty positions to fill.  And that's not even counting the lords that will be stripped of their titles once Daenerys takes the Iron Throne.

Arya had known that this was coming.  She just didn't think it was going to include Gendry.

"Our fathers fought as brothers, once.  They went to battle side by side, to protect each other, to die for each other.  Months ago, you swore your sword to me, one bastard to another.  You remember?"

"Yes."  Jon doesn't quite have the skill at diplomacy that Daenerys does.  When she makes speeches, she makes the air quiver, makes men want to fall to their knees and profess their loyalty to her even if they've already sworn their swords a million times over.  "I remember."

"When my father was alive, he was trying to find the rightful heir to the Iron Throne.  And that heir sits beside me now."  Arya isn't quite sure what he's getting at.  She only thinks its a bit stupid, trying to make some sentimental talk about their fathers when Robert had abandoned Gendry to a life in fleabottom.  "But you are Robert's son.  His only heir.  The only one left to take on the Baratheon names and titles."

The hall is silent.  It's only then that Arya understands what is going on, and it makes her feel a little faint, because no, no,  _no,_ he wasn't any king's son, he was nothing like that rotten king, he was kind and good and strong and he was hers, no one else's, and they weren't about to place a title on his shoulders just so Gendry could be convinced to die for them again.  And yet-,

"Our families have worked closely for decades. Our fathers fought as one, with one common goal.  I see no reason why their deaths should end that."   _He doesn't do it right,_ Arya thinks.  She had seen this before.  Jon isn't using the right words, the right tone, the right posture.  He just walks off his throne and grasps Gendry by the forearm to help pull him by his feet.  "You're the only heir.  You'll have their lands, and their titles, and it'll be passed from you to your sons to your grandsons and all the rest, so long as we make it through this war.  Rise, Gendry Baratheon."

Arya's not sure why, but she feels a bit like crying.

 

 

She goes to visit him in the forge the next day.

He's a lord, but he's still the best smith they've got, so he stands down there with the heat and flames and brings his hammer down hour after hour after hour, until she thinks they must have enough swords to arm every man in the seven kingdoms.  If only that many men would come to fight with them.

"Milady."  He smiles at her.  He's got ash streaked across his face.  Arya wonders if he knows, if he would care.

"My lord."  She takes her seat up on one of the hay bales.  There used to be things piled on it, but after the first time she came to visit and cleared it off so she had a place to rest, Gendry had kept it empty.  Just in case.  "You'll have to learn to say it right, now that you're a high born."

She might be being mean.  Arya can't tell.  But Gendry doesn't seem to mind.

"Lord."  He snorts and hands off the sword he was working on to someone else.  "I didn't want that."

"Liar."

"I didn't  _ask_ for that."

"But you deserved it."  

"For what?"

"For being brave?  For fighting?  I don't know.  But trust me," She wanted to wipe the fear off his face.  She hates that he has to look afraid all the time.  Hates it even more that she probably looks the same way to him.  "You're going to make a better lord than half of the ones already out there."

"I'm a smith.  A bastard.  From fleabottom."  Maybe that's why he looked so afraid.  "I can't even speak right, you said it yourself."

"I was only joking.  And you don't do it alone.  I know they like to pretend that they do it all by themselves, but no lord really does."  Arya leans back on the hay, considers what she's about to say.  "I'll help you, if you need it."

He doesn't comment on that.  It's probably for the best.

"I need to get back to work." It's a dismissal if there ever was one.  He's good at the lord business already.  "I'll come see you later, if I can.  Alright?"

Arya slips down off the hay.  She stumbles, but rights herself before Gendry can help her.  His hand hangs in the air for a moment before it drops back to his side.

"As you wish, my lord."

"Don't call me that.  It's Gendry to you."  He bumps his side against hers, playfully.  "I  _command_ it."

"You keep calling me milady."  She's got her hands on her hips, ready to fight.  She likes it when they argue.  There's no squishy feeling in her chest when they argue, nothing scary about calling each other stupid and threatening to push him into the dirt.

"Well, yes."  He grins at her over the fire and picks up his hammer again.  "But we both know that you like it."

 

 

They're going off to fight again.

This time, there's no rush.  This time, it's planned and precise.  This time, there is plenty of room for goodbyes.

Arya's tempted to not even go see Gendry, given how bad the last good bye went, but she caves.  She always does, when it comes to him.

"I was wrong, you know."  He had found her in the crypts.  Found her on the way down to the crypts, technically, and Arya had just shoved the torch into his hands and trusted that he would follow.  Gendry always does, in the end.  "About the ocean.  It's not blue. It looked like mud.  Like a river."

They were standing in front of her father's bones.  Gendry doesn't know that.  Arya isn't about to tell him. 

"Some of them are blue.  If you go out far. Some of them are so clear that you can wade out into your waist and look down to see your toes in the sand."  She'd go diving for fish, sometimes, when the faceless man asked her to.  Fish and clams and oysters, whatever they wanted, for no other reason than they commanded it.  Arya's not sure anyone ever ate them.  

"Where?"

"Bravos, for sure.  But there's others."  She swallows hard, fighting back the memories.  "Ones not so far away."

"I'd like to see them."

"We could go.  Take a ship, see the world."  It's a nice thought, one that bubbles up inside of her.  "If we slipped out now we could be on our way before anyone even noticed we were gone."

"We can't that.  It wouldn't be-,"

 _Honorable._ "I know.  It was just a thought.  Just something nice."  She walks a few paces down into the crypt and Gendry follows, however hesitantly. He doesn't like it down here, with the death and the spiders.  "Lyanna would have done it.  Lyanna  _did_ do it."

"And it got her killed."

"No.  No, that was Jon."  She would have lived if birthing him hadn't killed her.  Could have ran to her husband or made up some lie so she could go live happily ever after with Robert.  But that's not what happened.  "I suppose if he dies up there you'll have to burn him."

"He won't die."

"It's just as well."  Arya's not sure why she's saying these things.  "There was really no spot for him down here.  Bastards don't belong in the family crypts."  At some point, they'll have to expand this.  If the war doesn't end.  "There's not a spot for me and Sansa, either.  We weren't supposed to die as Starks."

"Arya."  His hand is on her arm.  She wonders what he might have done if he wasn't holding the torch, but pushes that away.  "You're not going to die."

Arya stares at him, thinks about kissing him again.  Thinks about telling him of the conversation that she and Jon had and asked why that subject possibly would have come up.  But she doesn't, just takes the torch from him and leads him back into the light, past her father, past the empty graves where her mother and brother were supposed to rest.  They wouldn't ever get her bones.  They Frays weren't as good at diplomacy as Tyrion.  Catelyn Stark's bones were sitting in the bottom of a river.

"We could still go, you know.  Too see the world.  Whatever's left of it."  She can't shake the thought, her and Gendry touring the castles in Dorne, heading over to Bravos.  Though maybe not Bravos.  She's not sure how welcome she would be there.  "After."

"After."  Gendry nods his head and shakes his jaw, and she knows without being told that this is their last good bye.  He's a lord now, and she's a Stark.  They do not have room for scenes like the one they made last time.  "I'd like that very much."


	4. Chapter 4

"I think I'm going to marry him."

Arya pushes herself up on one elbow and stares over at Sansa, not quite able to make out the look on her face around the furs that they had piled over each other.  They sleep in the same bed now, what with all the extra men that had piled into Winterfell for housing and protection, and the fact that as winter gets closer, the castle grows colder.  No matter how big they build the fire, no matter how tightly Arya wraps herself in the furs, she cannot get warm.  She's not sure how the men who went beyond the wall could be surviving, but they are.  She gets enough letters from Jon and Gendry to have proof of that.

( _Sansa had brought the idea up to her one day, about moving their rooms together so they can give up more space for the soldiers and kept warmer at night, but Arya knows the truth.  The truth is that Sansa is a ruler and not a fighter, and she is terrified of the things that a locked door cannot keep out._ I will not be taken alive, if they come for us,  _Sansa had told her, and Arya supposes that's why she's here, sleeping with a dagger under a pillow and Needle resting against the headboard, that final barrier between Sansa and all her old ghosts that she can't ever seem to be able to outrun._ )

( _Arya's got her list.  Sansa has one of her own.  She wonders which one is longer._ )

"Marry?"  Sansa always dreamed of getting married.  That was all Arya could remember her talking about- the marriage, how all the lords and ladies would come, the feast, the dress, how she would do her hair.  Sometimes, if Sansa had been nice to her that day and Arya was in the mood to play pretend instead of running around in the mud, she would go along with it- pick out a lord for Sansa to marry, place bets on how long it would be before Sansa has her first bratty, screaming child.  Arya always told her that her children would be ugly, and Sansa would always shriek and swat at her and pull her hair, telling her that it wouldn't be beautiful, that the knight or lord she married one day would be beautiful, and that means she was going to have beautiful little babies, as many of them as she could stand.  They haven't played that game in a while.  Certainly not since after Joffrey.  Arya hadn't thought they ever would.  She's not entirely sure what they're talking about right now is a game.  "Who?"

"Tyrion."  There's a shift in the mattress that means that Sansa had turned to face her.  Arya works to keep her face blank.  

"The Imp?"  She didn't mean to sound surprised.  And she definitely didn't mean to yell it loud enough to make Ghost raise his head and growl at her.  

"That's not his name."  Arya used to call him all sorts of names.  She remembered being so excited when she heard that the Queen's brothers were going to escort her to Winterfell.  They were the stuff of stories, the Lannister boys, the Imp and the Kingslayer.  Arya had been disappointed.  At the end of it all, they were just men, though one admittedly more ugly than the other.  "He's a  _lord."_

"He's a  _Lannister._ "

"He's not like them."

"Oh?"  Arya slipped her hands out of the covers and let her arm tangle so ghost could nuzzle at her hand.  Jon had left him behind to protect them.   _So I can keep an eye on you,_ he had said.   _Not sure what good he'll do fighting these things anyways._ Sansa had swallowed the excuse but Arya knew the truth.  They didn't take the direwolf because there was a chance he might die, and they couldn't risk the white walkers having a dragon and a monster hound both.  "And what's he like?"

"Kinder."  Sansa's voice was soft.  So soft.  Not angry and defensive like it used to be when she would talk about Joffrey.  That had been with the voice of a girl.  This is the voice of a survivor.  "Smarter."   _She loves him,_ Arya thinks, disgusted and amazed all at the same time.   _She really, really loves him, the Imp of all people._ "He would never hurt me."

Arya rolled over so she was closer to her, close enough that she could see the smile on her sister's eyes, how she looked at peace for the first time.  "He's ugly."

"He isn't handsome, no.  And he isn't strong.  He's never going to be a knight.  But that's not so important."  Sansa searched out her hand in the darkness and Arya lets her take it.  "He'll be good to me."

"You don't have to marry."  Was she saying this for Sansa or for herself?  "Jon wouldn't force you to, not after... not after everything."

"I know."  Sansa closed her eyes again and sighed, one long drawn out breath as she eased herself back down under the covers.  "But I think I really might want to."

 

 

The castle is emptier, without all the men.

Arya doesn't really know what to do with herself.

"Relax, girl."  The Hound kept growling at her.  Always yapping at her heels, always barking orders.  Arya doesn't mind, just as long as he can do it while they fight.  She thinks she might even be able to beat him one of these days.  "There'll be plenty for you to do until they get back."

"Not fighting."  She gets tired of this kind of fight.  Arya could remember when all she wanted to do was be a knight, when all she wanted to do was to be able to swing a sword as well as her brothers.  But she was wrong.  She didn't want to be a soldier, she wanted to be a killer.  She wanted to make people  _afraid._ "Sitting in on councils.  Working with rations.   _Planning."_

Clegane stops short.  He had disarmed her and she had put a wife to his neck.  "That wasn't the game we were playing."

"A girl lacks honor.  I know."  She shoved both Needle and the dagger back down at her side.  "So I've been told."

"You told me you wanted to fight."  He took a long draw from the wineskin at his side.  Arya's pretty sure that it has just water now.  She doesn't know when that happened.  He doesn't seem happier for it, but he does seem slightly less likely to put his fist through someone's face at any given moment.  "That's what I'm trying to teach you to do."

"I wanted to win."  She crawled up onto the hay bales.  She likes to be tall.  "There's a difference."

"You cheated."

"Is there such a thing as cheating during a sword fight?  All your rules."  She threw herself back down into the hay and wondered what everyone would do if she walked back into the castle and up to her room, just looked at everyone and said  _no, so sorry, I believe I've done enough for now, you'll have to fight the queen and the white walkers all on your own._ Probably nothing good.  Sansa would come in and drag her out by her hair.  "I told you before.  That's why you'll never be a good killer."

"You're wrong.  I'm a  _great_ killer."  He points his sword at her and Arya jumps down at him, rolls with the impact and comes up in a crouch.  She had learned to jump between buildings back in Bravos.  The terrain here is nothing.  "The way you kill, no one's ever going to know your name."

"That doesn't matter."   _Cersei.  Illyn Payne.  The Tickler._ _The Freys._ "I knew all of theirs."

 

 

 

She writes Gendry letters.

Arya isn't sure why.  She isn't sending them.  With the wind and the snow, there was no guarantee that the Ravens would make it there.  If Jon or Daenerys or Sansa want to send a message, they have to send a rider.

She hasn't heard any news of Gendry, which she supposes is a good thing.  The riders always bring back the names of the dead.

_It's fine here.  Fine as fine can be, I guess.  It's cold, but I bet you're colder._

_The Kingslayer is here.  It's true what they say- he's lost a hand, and not very cleanly.  He used to wear this awful gold thing overtop the stump, something his father had made for him, but one night he chucked it to the ground in front of Sansa's feet and told her to melt it down.  I'm not sure what for.  We can't very well go to Dorne or the Free Cities and sell it for anything.  Maybe she can melt it down and make a crown._ _Or maybe a dagger.  I'd like a golden dagger._

_The Hound doesn't like the way I fight.  Says it isn't honorable.  That I might be good at killing but no one will ever remember me for it.  I don't care.  I never expected anyone to sing any songs about me.  The servants of the Freys remember me- remember how they walked in to find all their lords and ladies falling all over that cold stone floor and an empty chair where Walder should have been._

_I miss you.  I want to see you.  I keep trying to convince Sansa to let me come see you, but she keeps saying no.  Says I'm too important to risk, that there's no need of me to leave.  But I'll think of something eventually.  Or maybe I'll blink and you'll be back already._

_It doesn't matter.  Either way.  Hurry up and kill all those things, won't you?_

 

 

 

The Queen comes for them, just like Jaimie had warned them she would.

It annoys Arya, because that means he was on her side, and that meant he was probably here for good.  The Dragon Queen had made a point that any past sins would be forgiven, for anyone who proved themselves loyal to her now.  And most people are, if they have the choice or the brains.  It's either her or death.

"No."  Sansa catches her by the elbow and spins her around.  Bran watches them from his seat the table.  He's the eldest, and technically their father's true heir, but he is in no shape to lead the battle.  That falls to Sansa.  Everything has fallen to Sansa.  "Don't you dare go out there."

"You heard him.  They need men."

"You aren't a _man._ "  Sansa looked half mad.  Her braids were fraying and her cheeks were flushed, and in her hand was a dagger.  It was the one that Littlefinger had sent to kill Bran.  Arya's not sure how she got it, or why she had been carrying it around in her skirts.  

"I'm a sword."  Arya ripped herself free.  "That's really the only thing that matters."

She makes it out of the hall and down the stairs until Sansa chases after her.  "You're too small.  Too tiny.  There's too many of them.  They'll knock you down and they'll kill you and then there'll only be three of this.  You aren't good at this kind of fighting, you said it yourself.  Arya."  Sansa grabbed onto her again, and this time, Arya stays still.  " _Please._ "

"I'm not going to hide behind closed doors, if that's what you want."  Arya wanted to shake her off, wanted to go, but she had learned that as much as she hated it, everything goes better when they listen to Sansa.   "I'm not a coward."

"I can't fight.  Bran can't fight.  There's not enough men out there.  If they get through."  Sansa tugged on her arm, tightened her grip until her nails dug into Arya's skin.  "If they get through those doors Bran and I die, Arya.  It'll be over before I can even scream."  Arya closed her eyes, and down in the court yard, she could see Brienne and the Hound getting ready to fight.  "Please don't  leave me.  You..."  Her breath was shaky, and it was the first time since they had been reunited that Arya had seen her be afraid.  "I'm not going to let her take me back, I told you that."

 _You're her little body guard, following around that little bird every where she walks._ _Joffrey had one of those.  It was me.  And I did a lot of terrible things to protect him._ The Hound had told her that, after he had watched Arya trail Sansa around the castle.   _She might have hated it there, but she did learn so many lessons, didn't she?_

"Okay."  Arya lets out a breath she didn't know she was holding, leads Sansa back to the throne room and stands in front of her sister and brother both.  "If they get past me,"  She says, making her sister curl her hand back around the dagger.  "Stick them with the pointy end."

"If they get past you?"  Sansa smiled for the first time that day, right as the first sounds of the battle floated up over the walls and greeted them, a cacophony of steel and screams.  "They won't."

 

 

 

"When Stannis came to take over the castle, Cersei had all the women stay in the castle with her."  It was after.  After they had won.  After Arya had run around and treated the wounded, after the men had killed the horses again ( _both theirs and the enemies, double the meat_ ), after Sansa had taken some for prisoner and turned some men away.  Jaimie had seemed happy.  He had told them that it was over.  That after the war was won -the one that mattered, anyways- Cersei would be easy to handle.  She had sent all her men up here to die and lost over half of them to the march alone.  "To protect us.  To inspire us, because it was her duty, as it would be mine someday, she said."

Arya stayed quiet.  Sansa doesn't always talk like this, about what happened in their time apart.  It was always about the here and now, or the future, or when she's sad, about the days when father was still alive and they were happy and neither of them had any idea that men could be so cruel.  

"I hated her.  She was a terrible woman who had a terrible son, and together they did terrible, terrible things.  But she was only what the world made her.  And I admired her, a bit.  I admired her a lot."  Her voice was hushed.  Arya could still picture the Queen's face, how beautiful she was.  She had heard she wasn't beautiful anymore, but all her sources had been biased.  "And whatever she was, she was a queen.  There were all these men telling her to sit down and shut up, and still, she knew how to rule.  How to make people fear her."

"I feared her.  I was terrified of her.  But I listened to her, and I watched her, and I remembered everything she told me.  I learned a lot from the queen.  And do you know what I learned that night?"

There was a pause.  Arya almost didn't want to know.  "What?"

"Illyn Payne was there.  The executioner, you know.  All silent, with that mouth of his. You could tell that he didn't have a tongue, you know, once you knew- his cheeks caved in a bit, and he breathed a bit funny."  Arya's hand was reaching for her sword, even though there was nothing for her to fight.  It was eerie, to hear this story in a darkened room.  "Anyways.  He was there, for our protection.  And at first, I thought that meant he would fight off the soldiers when they came through the door.  And they were going to come."

"But I wrong.  He wasn't there for the soldiers.  He was there for us.  For the Queen, and for me, and anyone else who might give Stannis the upper hand.  And I remember thinking how horrible that was.  That no matter what those soldiers might do to me, I wanted to  _live_."  Sansa was so angry.  At the queen, at those men, at herself.  Always angry.  "But I get it now.  Illyn Payne was the least scary thing about that night.  If I had to do it all over again, I'd take the sword and I wouldn't even scream."

Arya was silent for a long moment.  "Is that what I was?"  It gives new meaning to Bran and Sansa sitting there in the throne room, all proud and dignified even as the soldiers screamed out below them.  "Your Illyn Payne?"

"No.  Never, Arya.  I would never ask you to do that.  But I did tell you before,"  There's a rustling underneath the blankets and then Sansa is pressing a bottle down into the palm of Arya's hand.  She doesn't ask her what it was for.  She's pretty sure she knows.  "I wasn't going to let them take me back."

 

 

 

The next day, there are riders heading to the wall, each with the same message.  The men that had been lost.  The rations and resources gained, stolen off Lannister dead.  That the Queen had been defeated.  Mostly defeated.  Practically defeated.  Defeated enough that it would be child's play to throw her out of the castle, should they actually make it out alive.

This time, Arya joins them, saddling up her horse with her own supply of rations thrown over her back.

This time, Sansa doesn't stop her when she leaves.


	5. Chapter 5

When she gets to the Wall, a really big part of her wants to turn around.

 _They left you behind,_ a voice was saying, and beneath her, her horse shies away from the gate, like she can tell that they don't belong so far north.   _They don't want you here.  What makes you think they're going to be happy to see you?_

The doubt eats her up, makes her want to run back to Winterfell, but then the gates are opening and a boy is grabbing the reins and leading her horse into the courtyard, and the Hound is grabbing her by the waist in a very unproper fashion and setting her down onto the muddy ground with a grunt and a grimace, and by the time Jon burst out of his chambers at the top of Castle Black to see what all the commotion was about, it was really too late to turn back.

"Arya."  He doesn't sound angry, but he doesn't seem thrilled, either.  Mostly, he just seems worried, running down the steps towards her, big black cloak billowing out behind him, Longclaw flashing silver at his side.  "What are you doing here?"  He looks to the Hound instead of her, and that makes Arya want to scream.  She keeps wondering when the others will stop seeing her as some little girl who needs protecting, and as time goes on, she's more and more sure that the answer will be never.  "Did something happen?"

"There was a battle."  It was the wrong thing to say.  The wrong way to start.  "We won,"  She added, pressing on, aware of the people staring, how they whispered.  She caught the words  _Frey_ and  _faces_ and felt her own face flush, so she turned back to Jon, shifting so the Hound hid her from sight.  "Everyone's fine.  I just-,"  _I just stood in the middle of the Great Hall with a sword in hand waiting for the enemy to come, and a few of them did so I cut them into pieces while Sansa and Bran watched, and they were drinking wine, drinking wine but leaving just enough in their cups to help them swallow back the poison that Sansa had stolen from the Measter, leaving me to fight when they knew all along that they would just give up when the time comes._ "I missed you."

"I missed you, too."  He looked like he wanted to kneel down in front of her like he had back in Winterfell, but he held himself back.  Then, he had room to be soft.  Here, he was a soldier, a man made steel, a commander.  There was no time to be weak in a place like the wall.  "But you shouldn't be here."

"I won't be a bother," She insisted, and felt young, then, too, like the little girl that used to insist to Rodrick that she would stay out of the way if only he let her sit in on the sword fighting lessons but got sent out of the way anyways.  "You won't even know I'm here."

"Won't even-,"  Jon curses under his breath, glares at the Hound behind her like it might somehow be his fault, and then turns back to her.  "Arya, we don't even have a place for you to sleep."

She hadn't thought of that.  The wall used to be empty once, but now it's overflowing, filled to the brim with soldiers and wildlings and men of the night's watch, and it's the first time that Arya considered the fact that maybe this wasn't the best place for a girl to be, even a girl who knew how to use a sword as well as she could.  "You have room for the men," She insisted, knowing that that wasn't what he meant.  "I'm small."

"Small?"  Jon echoed, truly angry, and she's certain that he was about to round on the Hound and tell him to take her home this instant, but someone stopped him.

A very familiar someone.

"She can have my tent, milord,"  Gendry said, ever helpful, hopeful, still playing the role of the peasant even though he's wearing Baratheon colors on his cloak.  "It's really no trouble."

Jon opened his mouth, closed it, and then glared at him.  It was so similar to the way that he used to look at Bran that it made her chest ache.  "And where will you sleep?"

"Doesn't matter so much for me, does it?"  He said, shrugging, his hands shoved deep in his pockets, and even before he talks, she knows what he's going to say next.  "Only the best for my lady."

 

 

 

 

She doesn't see him again until nightfall.

Jon had made it clear that she was allowed to stay, but that she was not allowed to fight, and when the first sign of trouble comes, the Hound would be taking her straight back to Winterfell as fast as she could, whether that happens voluntarily or he has to strap her to the saddle.  Arya didn't argue.  She was too caught up in the idea of being there, in the middle of things, and the prospect of talking to Gendry again, even if he had to stay in the forge all day.

(The Hound wouldn't let her see him.  Wouldn't let her out of his sight.Even now, he was waiting by the fire outside the door, but she happened to know that he had fallen asleep ages ago.)

"You're back late."  Gendry jumps at the sound of her voice, almost falling backwards out the mouth of his tent.  He had already taken one shoe off, balancing on one leg.  She's feeling generous enough to decide that's why she was able to scare him so bad he almost toppled over.  "Do they always make you work this hard?"

He doesn't snark back at her. They used to go back and forth for hours sometimes, on that long walk to the wall, and then again when they were on the run from Harrenhall.  Hot Pie would join in sometimes, but mostly it was just the two of them, insult after insult, joke after joke, and eventually they would pick away at each other until one of them steered them into the realm of a real conversation.  This time, he just stays quiet.

"Gendry?"  She props herself up on one elbow and shivers when the furs fall away from her.  His tent was one of the better ones, him being a lord now and one of Jon's earliest followers, but that didn't keep the cold out.  Nothing could keep the cold out.  "Are you alright?"

"I didn't mean to wake you up."  

His voice came out as a croak.

"You didn't."  She swung her legs out from underneath the blankets and shoved them into her boots.  "I was waiting for you to come back.  I missed you."  And then, because she didn't normally admit to things like that and because she didn't like feeling like he had the upper hand, she added, "Didn't you miss me?"

"I didn't mean to wake you," He repeated, stubbornly, and she didn't think she was imagining the hint of anger lacing his voice. "I just wanted to grab a new pair of boots before I went to bed."

 _Two pairs of boots,_ she thought, and that was another mark of how things have changed, because most of these men were walking out of their shoes with every step they take, but Gendry was a lord now, and the queen took care of the lords that serve her well.  So he got two pairs of boots.  And spare blankets, and a tent all his own.  And he had given it all up for Arya in exchange for a spot on the mess hall floor.

(The prime communal sleeping area, she had learned, was the kitchens, because even though the cooks woke you earlier than you wanted, the fires burned all night and kept you warm.  Either there or the stables.)

"You don't have to leave.  You could stay.  Gendry."  She edged over to give him more room on the bedroll, unsure if they would both fit but knowing he would be warmer with her than on some cold cement floor, and she wasn't thinking of the implication of that, only that they had done it before.  It would be like old times.  She was fairly certain that if he agreed, it would be the best nights sleep she'd had in months.  "I wouldn't mind if you stayed."  And then, when he still hadn't moved, just stood frozen with his back to her, she added, "I want you stay."

He swallows, hard.  She can see the way his throat moves by the light of the fires outside.  Against the tent, his shadow stretches on and on, and she tracks his motions using the projection instead of actually looking at him.  "Can't stay."  He straightens up, and at his sides, his hands were clenching into fists.  She had noticed that once, on the road, and he told her that was what he used to do when he was trying to stop from hitting Hot Pie.  Arya wondered what she would have  to do to get him to hit her.  "Wouldn't be proper."

"I don't care."  

"You're a lady-,"

"I'm not a lady-,"

"You're a lady," He repeated, stubborn, loud enough and sudden enough to cut over her voice, and Arya might not have cared about what was proper but she did know that he needed to quiet down, because it wouldn't be good for either of their reputations if people thought they had shared a tent.  Those things were acceptable, but only if they were done quietly.  "You're a lady, my Lord's little sister, and-," He cuts himself off, and she had never felt like this, like the entire world hinged on whether or not this boy turned his back on her, had never been one to care about boys at all, let alone a stupid smith from stinking fleabottom, but here she was, hanging onto his every word.  "I'm a bastard, I've got no right-,"

"You're a lord."  She's up on her knees, reaching out to him, and he comes to meet her, kneeling in front her, his hands on her shoulders, urging her back down to ground, to sleep, to rest.  "My brother made you a lord."

"I'm a bastard," He had said, his eyes so kind, so gentle, and when he brings the furs back up to tuck around her shoulders, his hands were so soft you would have never guessed that he had held a sword.  She hadn't even noticed that she was shivering until he did it.  "And bastards don't share tents with ladies, no matter how badly they want to."

 

 

 

The next morning, they don't talk about it. 

By the time she gets ready for breakfast, Gendry is already there, leading her to the dining hall.  He takes her on a tour of the three forges that they had established, all under his direction, all started with the power of dragon fire.  He takes her to see Jon, and to meet Gilly in the kitchens, and then drops her back off at his tent right when the sun was shining in earnest, one gentle hand bumping under her chin to make her look at him.

 _I'm going to the forge,_ he had said, and even though his words were normal, his tone was pointed.   _I won't see you again until morning._

 The implication had made her blood boil.  It had also made her want to cry.

"That bastard boy,"  The hound said, later, when the two of them were crowded around a fire, him ripping at a hunk of goat meat.  "You love him?"

"No."  She spits the word out on the ground, and only when she found the question still hanging in the air to face her did she start to wonder maybe if that was a lie.  "Course not."

"I see.  So last night," He waved his dinner around in the air and a bit of grease splashes onto her arm, burning her, and she hisses from the pain.  His eyes linger on the burn for a  moment and he almost looks sorry, which is a new thing to see from the Hound.  "That was just a conversation between friends?"

It takes a lot of effort not to react to that.  To keep from hitting, or threatening him, or letting her face burn bright red.  "You heard that?"  Of course he heard it.  There weren't walls between them and the rest of camp.  It was a damn tent- sound carries through cloth.  "Going to run and tell my brother?"

"Not his sword shield.  I'm yours.  Yours and your sisters."  He doesn't break eye contact.  "Your secrets aren't going to be shared by me.  Didn't your measter ever teach you that?"

Arya stared at them.  "You always said that you weren't a knight."

"I'm not."  He shrugs, and both of them are trying so desperately to pretend that this is not a talk about feelings, which it is.  Hers and Gendry's, which is complicated, and this thing between her and the Hound, which is more so.  When she found herself in need of a father figure, she never thought that she would turn to the Hound.  "But the job description is pretty much the same."

It had been surprising, when he had walked through the hall at Winterfell and knelt at Sansa's feet, called her little bird and offered up his service to her, to give his sword and his life, to fight for her, to protect her.   _I'll fight for you, little bird,_ he had said, and he looked terrible there, with his scars and blood stained armor, but he also looked the most like a knight Arya had ever seen.   _Fight for you until there's no one left to put you back in a cage._ And then, when they all thought he couldn't do anything more strange, he had walked to the back corner of the room where Arya had been hiding and fell to the ground like someone had knocked his legs out from underneath him, laid his sword at her feet with a clatter and promised the same to her.   He wasn't a knight, exactly, but it was a far leap from the Clegane who had ran down an unarmed butcher's boy on nothing but a sadists' say so.

"He saved my life," She hears herself saying, and she hopes that the Hound realizes that she is talking about more than just Gendry, even though it's two very different situations.  "I suppose you can love anyone, after that."

 

 

 


	6. Chapter 6

She and Gendry don't talk as much as she thought they would.

He's busy.  Everyone that has even an hours worth experience as a smith has suddenly found themselves working as hard as they can for as long as they can, and even though Gendry was a lord and could have said no, his training meant that he worked harder than any of them, and for longer.  The fires burn as hot as they can make them, as many as they can squeeze into such a small place without burning the wall down, and the men work round the clock.  Arya can barely sleep for the sound of all the hammering.

She's not sure that Gendry sleeps at all, what with the time he spends there, running from one forgery to the other on top of everything he does for Jon.

"We don't have enough," He tells her, when Arya had come to him and pulled him away from his anvil long enough to eat the handful of dried fruit she had brought for him.  That's one of the things he had complained about at the wall, how bad the food was.  Gendry had smiled when he saw what she had, and she didn't bother to tell him how much it cost her, to get fruit in the middle of the war.  She doesn't think he's ever eaten something that expensive.  "Even with all the fires, and all the men- no where near enough."

Arya didn't want to think about that.  The others are keeping up a brave face, but Arya had had served death before.  How could they hope to win, when every man of their own falls is just another person that they have to fight?  How could they possibly have enough weapons to fight a force that large, how could they possibly ask the men to be able to fight, when their brothers fall in front of them and come back to life only so that they can kill each other?

"It's the dragon glass."  He continues, when she doesn't answer.  Gendry chews with his mouth full.  Jon doesn't.  Nobility is something that has to be taught, not just something that can be handed out.  Arya's starting to understand what Gendry means that no paper from Daenerys can turn him into a lord overnight.  She's almost glad of it.  Nothing Jon says can make her a lady, either.  It's like they're a matching set of misfits.  "It doesn't like to melt.  Doesn't like to bend."

"Neither do dragons."

"No."  They both moved to stare up at the upper part of the wall where Daenerys was standing.  Missandei was beside her.  The Dragon Queen had tried to leave her behind, but Missandei wouldn't hear of it.  "They don't."

 

 

 

Arya gets to sit in on the war councils.

Not that they're that much of a council.  It's just Jon and Tormund and the Onion Knight sitting around a table, sometimes with Grey Worm and Daenerys, sometimes not.  Sometimes Gendry comes.  Arya likes those meetings best.

"Enough with battle plans."  Jon wipes everything off the table with a sweep of his arm, sending the chess pieces they were using for makeshift markers flying across the room.  They roll across the floor and clack against the wall before finally coming to a stop.  "What good are battle plans against them?"

Davos starts forward.  Arya stays still.  She had learned to be still.  "My Lord."  Davos' hand makes a motion, either a spasm or  stretch.  Without the fingers, Arya can't tell.  "The men,"

The men want plans.  The men want information.  The men want stations, and battle formation, and a real idea of what their defenses were.  Arya knows it does not do any good- this is not an army they were facing, this is one being, one body that will climb and crawl and kick and fight until the very last of them, and for every one of those bastards that falls, two of their own men will be there to take their place.  It won't be a battle, it will be bloodshed.  Arya's only a girl, only eighteen compared to all their years of experience, but she still knew that drawing up battle lines isn't going to help them.

"The men?"  Jon isn't very good at being a leader.  Robb was better.  Sansa  _is_ better.  But they aren't here now, and Arya is only a shadow, incapable of making anyone fall into line.  "The men are tired.  The men are hungry.  The men are cold.  The men," He turns to Davos and Davos doesn't even flinch.  "Are running out of reasons to stay."

"Life, my lord."  Davos doesn't bow his head.  She had heard stories of how Stannis commanded his men, how they had to obey or burn.  Jon isn't like that.  His men are allowed more leeway.  Arya can't tell is this is a mistake or not.  "You'll find that that's a very compelling reason for most."

 

 

 

 

Gendry takes her to the top of the wall.

They aren't talking.  All of the castles were manned now, but Gendry had showed up at the tent and told her that he needed a break from all the screaming and fighting, so they went to the emptiest place that they could.  It was nice, being alone, and in all that quiet with the whole world stretching out in front of them, it felt wrong to talk.

(She does talk, though.  She sees him little enough as it is, she doesn't have time to be silent just because she was staring at something beautiful.  Sansa was the sister who got to be in awe over pretty things, not Arya.)

"Did Jon really climb this?"  She had heard stories about that.  Her bastard brother climbing this with spikes and a rope and his merry band of wildlings.  Including his wildling woman.  Arya wants to ask him about it, but he always gets so sad when someone asks him about anything that reminds him of Ygritte.  

"Yes."  Gendry laughs.  She likes the sound of his laugh.  It's lower than it had been when they were on their way to the wall for the first time, softer, more of a rumble in his chest than a burst of sound.  That's okay.  Arya had learned to be silent, too.  "Do you think he's lying?"

"No."  He's too honorable for that.  Theon might have lied to her, and Robb might have hidden the truth, but Jon was the brother that she could always count on to be honest.  Besides, the men talk about it.  All they have to do here is talk- talk and fight an freeze and leer at Arya when she walks by.  "It's just that it's so tall."

She walks a few paces away.  Gendry follows.  He was under orders from Jon to escort her everywhere.  Gendry takes job very seriously.

"Careful."  Arya had slipped, just a little slide of her foot across the ice, and Gendry had grabbed her to steady her.  They're standing too close, closer than they need to be, closer than they ever would if they were still standing where someone could see them.  But right now, they're at the top of the world.  "Don't want to fall."

"It'd be a long way down," She agreed, the words bringing clouds of stream with them into the air, and even though he's been holding onto her for just a moment too long, Arya still makes no move to pull away.  If anything, she just presses closer, digs her hands into the fur of his coat like she's still afraid of falling.  Maybe she is.  You can't even see the ground from up here.  "But there's worse ways to go."

"You're not allowed to leave me," Gendry says, still in that quiet voice, still holding onto her, both of them still knowing that anything that happened here would be their little secret.  "You promised."

"I made you promise, actually."  She smiles.  His arm slips lower, so it's more around her waist instead of just one hand splayed across her back.  It forces her upright, makes her even closer, so they barely even have room to breathe.  "Didn't say anything about me."

"It was a mutual promise," He argues back, and it feels like the old them, the them on the road when he had just found out that she a was a noblewoman, but back then her blood didn't count because she had no home and no family and no one willing to fight for her.  Back then there was  _family_ and  _together_ and  _my lady, you'll always be my lady._ Here there was only lords and ladies and the thought of what was proper getting in the way, all this cold and blood and pain forcing it's way between them.  "Think how stupid you would be if you go down in history as the only Stark to die from falling off the Wall."

(Not the first Stark to fall off of a wall, of course.  That was Bran.  She can tell when Gendry remembers it from the way he winces.)

"It would be silly."  She pushes past the moment.  Pushes away from him.  For a moment, he stands frozen, like he can't remember what to do now that he isn't holding her in his arms, and then he snaps back into motion, following her back to the edge of the wall.  His hand is still hovering beside her, just in case.  "Guess I'll just have to stay."

 

 

 

It becomes their spot, soon.

A spot where she doesn't have to worry about being a lady and all that comes with it, and where he doesn't have to worry about being a lord and how the title is still like a pair of shoes that he hasn't had the chance to break in yet.  A spot where she isn't thinking about Sansa and that little vial, where he does not have to think about the dragon glass that just refuses to be reshaped.

A spot where they can talk.

Where they can be Arya and Gendry again.

They tell each other things.  He tells her about fleabottom in all it's nasty details, not looking at her when he does so, like she might hear where he comes from and realize she doesn't want him anymore.  He tells her about the Red Woman again, the wine and the rope around the wrists and the leeches and how he told him later it was like leading a lamb to slaughter, that she was sorry but she had seen a lot of things be killed for the greater good and thought it was best if the innocent ones didn't have to know what was coming.  Tells her about the rowing and takes off his gloves so she can trace over the scars where the blisters were and shivers when she touches him, teaches her about constellations that she never bothered to learn.

( _Gendry learned.  Gendry had spent so long without knowing and now he wants to learn everything- the houses, the sigils, all the different gods, the stars, the seasons, the sun and moon and earth and ocean, how to hunt, how to fight, everything but how to be a true lord._ )

She doesn't talk as much.  She's shoved her stories down deeper, but eventually he does pull them out of her- about seeing Meryn Trant in a brothel and crossing another name in her list.  About how she used to clean the bodies of the people who offer themselves to the faceless god.  About how killing Walder Frey had been the first time she found peace.  That she used to chase cats around king's landing, how she stood in the skull of a dragon that was even bigger than the ones Daenerys had.  About Jon being the one to give her needle, about how she and Sansa used to fight all the time.  About how the crowd had screamed when Joffrey called for her father's head, and Arya had done nothing.  There was nothing about herself that Arya feels that she needs to hide anymore, not from him.

"I never thought I was going to be a lord."  Gendry wasn't looking at her.  She wasn't looking at him.  She was looking out- out over the wall at where the pink of the sun set hit the glare of the snow, a rope coiled around her arm to hold her as she leans out, out, out, out into nothing.  If Gendry was watching, he would yank her back.  "Even when the gold cloaks started looking for me.  I didn't think that that was a thing they could do."

"We thought Jon was a bastard.  Turns out he was a king."  She shrugged and the rope quivers and she falls back onto solid ground with a flurry of snowflakes.  Arya turns to see the end of it in Gendry's fist, his jaw clenched, eyes dark.  "They can turn anyone into a Lord, Gendry, bastard born or not."

"I wasn't made for it.  Never wanted it.  I just wanted," He cuts himself short.  

"What?"  Arya sits across from him, and when he still doesn't answer, she whacks him on the leg with the flat of her sword.  "Tell me."

"It's stupid," He says, but she is still staring, so he adds, "Thought I might take over the armory one day.  It's still fleabottom, but," Another shrug, and he is still not looking at her, just like he doesn't look every other time there is a reminder of where he came from and how far away it was from the life she had had.  "A better fleabottom than the one I was used to."

"That's it?"  It seemed to simple.  And not something to be that embarrassed about.  "You can still do that.  It could be a hobby sort of thing."  She taps him with the flat of the blade again and wishes she had the nerve to bring herself closer to him, maybe let him put her arms around her the way they always would on the road to keep warm.  "You can make all the helms you want."

"I don't want helms.  Not anymore.  Stupid, to stand out that much in a battle."  Arya makes a face.  He had loved that helm, once, and Cersei went and ruined it.  "I suppose I thought about taking a wife, too.  Kids.  That sort of thing."

He isn't looking at her again.  Arya makes a strangled sound in the back of her throat that makes her sound a bit like an angry cat.  

"Who?"

She didn't want him to answer.  Didn't want to know.  Didn't want to hear what Gendry thought of when he thought about taking a wife.  

( _Taking._ _That's always how men talk about it, like women are just something to be passed from father to husband, like a person is something that you can own.  Arya had seen wives that act like puppets caught up in all their strings, barely able to breathe without asking for permission.  But she imagines Gendry wouldn't act like.  He was never taught how.  Or if he had, the lesson never stuck._ )

"It was when we were on the road.  Right after I found out who you were, and before we thought that you were going to be able to go back to your family.  Back when I was your family.  And I thought," He sounds so incredibly embarrassed.  Like wanting this, wanting her in any capacity, at any time, might be something to be ashamed about.  "Not then, you know.  You were a little girl, and you had that sword that you kept hitting people with when they got too close, but after Harrenhall, I thought that maybe we'd just stay together.  That later we would,"

He trails off, but Arya understands.   _Later.  Later, it'd be safe for me to find my way in a city, to make a life for myself.  To make armor and helms and people would see how good it was, and I would get to have my own shop, eventually, and you'd be there with me the whole time.  We'd never have to leave each other.  It'd be together and family and my lady, always, for the rest of our lives, but for real this time._

Arya just stares at him, silent.

She's not really sure what he expects her to say to something like that.

 

 

"Are you afraid?"  Daenerys has to yell to be heard over the wind.  "There's no reason to be afraid."  Both of their cloaks are dragging in the snow behind them, making a sound like whispers.  "Nothing this close to the wall can hurt a dragon."

They have Drogon with her, the big one.  He's flying over head, and circles down low when his mother calls for him.  Before, Arya remembered Daenerys laughing, saying that nothing, nothing would be able to harm a dragon.  That no man alive would be able to kill one.

And she was right.

No man living was able to, but certain rules of life have become very easy to bend.

"It's good to be afraid."  Arya quickens her pace, but doesn't walk before Daenerys.  Somewhere, back at the wall, Jon is watching them, angry that they had passed through the gates.  "Only stupid people are never afraid."

Tomorrow, they would not be able to pass beyond the wall.  They would start shoring up the tunnels, patching the castles and gates in earnest.  In the Hound's words, they were going to make those fuckers climb.  It had been Daenerys who said that she wanted to see it one last time before it was lost to them forever, and even though Jon had said it was a stupid idea, Arya had jumped at the chance.  She wanted to see the godswood.  The Boltons had burned all the ones at Winterfell- once those tunnels close, the old gods will be lost to them, too.

 _I'm a Queen,_ Daenerys had said, half in response to Jon saying that she couldn't, and half to Arya, a little smile on her face.  _And Queens do what they wish, even when it isn't wise._

Arya's pretty sure that if Ser Barristan had been in the room, he would have had a heart attack.  But as it was, he wasn't there, and neither was Gendry, so there was nothing to stop them from grabbing two abandoned cloaks off the table and marching straight through the gate.  This woman was a queen.  Arya was a shadow.  No one tells them no.

It takes them two hours to get to the godswood.  Even then it isn't a godswood, it's only a tree, a tree with it's wrinkled mouth and eyes that weep blood.  Those eyes that see everything.

"Is that it?" Daenerys has her voice lowered, in that hushed, reverent tone that Arya had heard other people use in the sept.  "Are these your gods?"

"They're my fathers gods," Arya says, and falls to her knees at the base of it right in the middle of the tangle of the roots.  She tears off her glove and lays her hand flat on the bark and amazingly, it's warm.  "Not mine.  I think I went too far away for them to see me."

 _There is only one god, and it's name is death.  And what do we say to the god of death?_ Syrio's face rises up behind her closed eyes so much clearer than she had ever been able to picture him, followed by others- her father, her mother, Rickon, Robb, Micah the butchers boy, everyone she knows, and the rememberance feels like a gift, a caress, a whispered apology from gods whose roots did not reach far enough to save her.   _Not today._

 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hey Ao3 stopped sending me emails about the comments you guys leave me, any idea on how to fix that?
> 
>  
> 
> Also I've got another GoT fic called Of Mice and Monsters if you want to check that out. It's a modern au that focuses on Theon/Robb. An unpopular ship, but if you like my writing maybe you'll just be able to pretend it's a regular story and not game of thrones related?


	7. Chapter 7

The men are closing the gates.

Arya is only watching.

She had meant to help, because with the time running short as it is, she had thought that no one was going to complain about an extra set of hands, even if those hands belong to a girl.  But then Jon had caught sight of her from his perch outside the commander's quarters and sent the Hound down to get her, Clegane cutting through the mess of rock and ice and wheelbarrows and men like it was magic, and then he was grabbing Arya by the scruff of her fur cloak, his hands just gentle enough to call them guiding instead of forceful.  It is not good for someone to be seen manhandling the sister of the King in the North ( _Arya refuses to think about it in terms of her title, as in, it is not good to be seen manhandling one of the north's remaining princesses_ ), even for someone like the Hound, so he keeps his hands where they belong.  After their time on the road, Arya hadn't thought he would stick to the terms of propriety quite as well as he was doing, but the Hound seems determined to turn over a new leaf.

"I thought you were my sworn sword," She had snarled, and didn't struggle, because the Hound was trying to be proper but his patience was still just as thin.  She doesn't much fancy being thrown over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes and dumped at her brother's feet.  She's too old for that, and occupies much too high a position to be sent sprawling on the floor.  "Thought you were done being some king's lapdog."

Arya meant the words to be cruel but they didn't quite make it there, maybe because she was so small and he was so big and nothing they say to each other comes without a little bite.  He laughs instead of getting angry, and Arya can feel more than hear the rumble of it in his chest.

"Your brother doesn't think that that pit is any place for a lady."  It wasn't.  Arya would like to argue that there was no place on this stupid Wall that was fit for a lady, and yet the ladies seem to be here anyways, even though they always had to be on the look out for men that forget their vows or seem to think forcing themselves on a woman was worth the punishments that Daenerys had set out for anyone who might lay a hand on a woman who is unwilling.  "Can't say I disagree."

She didn't either, not really, and she remembered Gendry's warnings about what these men were willing to do, when the two of them were in the armory with her leaning on the wall and him staring down at the dragonglass that just refused to melt.  He had kept up a running commentary on who these men are and what they had done- rapers and murderers and wife beaters and thieves, and there were good men, too, but in the middle of war most people forget to be good men.

( _Will you?_ She remembered asking, and in the darkness his eyes looked like hot coals, glowing by the light of all that fire.  Arya had promised to stay until the end of his shift so Gendry could walk her back to the tent.   _Forget what it means to be a good man?_

 _No,_ he had said, and there was a smile on his face, even though nothing about his warnings were all that funny.  It just made her want to reach for her sword, and to make her list of names a little longer.   _I can't imagine I'll be forgetting anytime soon._ )

When Arya comes to stand beside Jon, he doesn't look at her.  He's got his hand ( _the one with the old burn scars that he won't talk about_ ) wrapped around the hilt of Longclaw, the same way he always does when he starts thinking of the whitewalkers.  Arya gives him another minute before talking, during which she kicks snow over the side of the walkway and ducks back into the shadows to keep from being seen when it lands on someone's head.  Gendry had started the game, but Arya took it up with a sort of vengeance.  There was precious little entertainment here when Gendry and Jon were working.  She would take what she could get.

"They'll be coming soon.  The watch hasn't seen anything yet, but with the snow," Jon pauses, seems to be wondering how much to tell her.  He's so worried about scaring her.  Arya wonders how he possibly could be, if maybe he refuses to listen to the stories that he has heard about her, that maybe he hadn't learned that in his time away Arya had become Sansa's little executioner.  "We might now see them until they're right up on us."

"It won't be a surprise.  They're going to have to climb the wall, remember?"   _We're going to make those fuckers climb,_ Clegane had said, when Gendry had asked why they were having to shore up the gates and the tunnels, and Davos had roared with approval.  "Besides, they have a dragon.  Dragons aren't sneaky."

She waits for him to contradict her.  That seems to be all he's good at doing, now, pushing away plans with the now worn out saying of  _it won't be good enough._ Arya doesn't want to be the one to tell him that maybe, just maybe, nothing they do will be good enough.

"I think you should leave.  Tomorrow, Daenerys is going to give the order that all nonessentials head back to winterfell.  Keep them out of the line of fire."

"Nonessentials?"  Arya laughed, and when she moved, the point of the dagger at her waist dug into her sides.  It doesn't hurt, but it does remind her that it's there.  "So just me, then.  Because everyone else is staying to fight."

"You and the Hound.  He won't be staying.  No good in this fight," Jon says, his brow furrowed, face crumpled, and she wants to dump a bucket of snow on his head just so she can see some expression on his face other than worry.  "Not with the fire."

"You promised that you would let me stay until we see them."

"But with the snow," He says, and sounds just as pained as he did on the day that he was leaving to take the watch, even though she could not recognize it then.  Now he can- how scared he is, how angry and frustrated, how much he is trying to hide it.  "The whole point of you leaving when the alarm sounds it to give you time to get away.  But if we don't see them until they're right up on us-,"

"Then I'll ride very fast and won't stop until I get to Winterfell.  It's already snowing, Jon.  Besides," His hand clenched around the sword even tighter, and without the gloves on, the scars are shining out in sharp relief against the rest of his skin.  Arya wants to tell him that he doesn't need to worry, that she is not afraid of dead things, but she swallows the words down, because something in Arya knows that that's not the truth.  This time, this one fight, she is very, very afraid, maybe because it's the only time she's thinking that she can't win.  "It's not like they're something I can really run from."

 

 

 

 

Gendry takes her away from the wall, further south, close enough that they could hear the cries go up if something were to happen but still far enough away that no one would be able to come see them.  Not the queen, not her brother, not even the Hound- just the two of them, their slightly stolen horses fighting through the snowbanks, riding close enough together that if one horse were to trip, the other would be brought down with them.

"Do you know how to ride?"  Arya tells herself that they are so close because of the snow and the wind.  If they travel too far apart they might lose sight of each other, and the wind would whip away their voices.  They would just have to trust that the other made it back to the wall okay, but Arya knows, somehow, that Gendry would never leave without her.  He would stay out and freeze all night while he tries to find her, even as Arya waits for him back at the Wall.  She thinks it's why she doesn't deserve him- he would die for her, and Arya would just do what needs to be done in order for them to survive.  She does not know why her version of events seems less sentimental.  "It doesn't look like you do."

"Okay, princess."  The  _my lady_ had gotten dropped in their everyday conversations, mostly because whenever he says it now they are always alone, always too close together than seems necessary, always with him speaking some hushed tone that manages to feel like a secret even if they are standing in a crowded room.  Arya hadn't known what to do with it, and Gendry seems to have recognized it, so he switches to this-  _princess,_ teasing, truthful, and just a shade shy of proper.  "Not all of us grew up in a castle, you know, with a bunch of servants to buckle our saddles-,"

Which, wasn't really correct and she's not sure that that was the right way to describe it, but, "We didn't have our servants do up our horses, only Sansa did that, you idiot, and who cares if you didn't grow up with them, we were on the run together, for  _weeks._ Part of that was on a horse, remember?"

"Well, I wasn't the one guiding the horse, you know, and it was always saddled for me, and  _not really my horse,_ Arya, so I never had to learn-,"

She's pretty sure that they were still teasing.  Just bickering.  Maybe.  Even when they should be fighting, the anger between the two of them seems to fizzle out in the face of what they will soon be fighting.  It doesn't seem worth it to get angry at each other when they knew either one of them could be dead in a matter of days, Gendry from the whitewalkers and her walking right back into the lions den, even though most everyone feels confident that the head lioness has been properly destroyed.  "You were going to join the band of brothers," She spits back, and the way she says the words and how her voice has twisted makes Arya certain that she has moved this conversation from easy chatter to something else, something a bit more bitter, like she had found an old scab and started to pick, and Arya never had been able to stop herself from doing that, no matter how bad it hurts.  "And you couldn't even ride a horse."

"I can ride a horse.  Just don't like to."   _He's afraid of the horses,_ she realizes, and finds that so funny that she almost snorts out a laugh, but doesn't, because he is staring over at her and has moved his horse so there is barely any room between the two of them at all, and he looks so beautiful, with the snowflakes caught in his eyelashes and melting in his hair and she wants to reach out and touch him, just like she wants to do every time she is alone, but if there is one thing in the world Arya is afraid of it is that, so she stays still, her fingers twisted around the reigns.  She also realizes that they are not fighting, anymore, and there is nothing teasing about his voice, just something soft and serious and sorry.  She hates when people are sorry.  In her experience, Arya finds it to be a fairly useless emotion.  "I'm sorry, Arya."

"For what?"

"For leaving you.  For trying to join them."  She turns away from him, stubborn, and Gendry leans over to pull her back, his fingers just barely brushing the bottom of her chin.  She doesn't turn back to him- refuses to, won't let him see how much the reminder still stings, even now.  "I should have listened to you."

"You should have.  They didn't care about you." Even to her own ears, Arya sounds like a little child.  Like the child she was when Gendry left her standing on that pathway, telling her that being family wasn't enough, that he would not follow her back to Winterfell, never mind that she could keep him safe.  "I cared about you."

"And I cared about you.  You must have known," He reaches out again, and she flinches.  She moves the horse away from him a bit, which is unfair, because she knows that Gendry is not a skilled enough rider to move up beside her again.  "Arya, you have to know how much I care about you."

The words hit Arya like a punch to the chest, and she doesn't really know what to do with them.  If this was Sansa, Sansa would know exactly what to say, because Sansa read all the stories about love and heard all the songs, but Arya didn't.  Even if she did, she doesn't think it would look quite like this- the two of them thrown together because some evil queen put a price on their heads and then running for their lives against a soundtrack of screams until they ended up here, at this moment, Gendry on a horse that he was terrified of and Arya backing away, him looking so stubbornly beautiful and good and just  _Gendry_ that she wants to punch him just to break the façade, and Arya sitting there with her hair plastered flat to her face because of all the melting snow.

"Then why'd you leave?"

They should not have this conversation now.  It is too cold.  Too windy for their hushed voices.  But Arya will not leave until she gets the answer, not when she's been wondering that for years.

"You-,"  He pauses, takes in a shuddering break and stares at the horse's mane instead of looking at her.  "I was just a bastard."

"I didn't care-,"

"But I did!  You think I wanted to leave you?  I wanted to stay with you, but the fact is, Arya, what happened in the road wasn't right, wasn't proper, and once we got you back to your brother, you would be- you'd be a Stark, again, and I'd just be a bastard boy from fleabottom, stuck in the back of some armory somewhere or given a sword to help fight the Lannisters, and I wouldn't get to see you, and when I did it would be from across the room or when you came to visit the armory, and I'd have to bow and be all proper and kiss your hand and call you  _Lady Stark,_ " and in his mouth the title sounded even more wrong than when Arya had said it herself, "and I didn't want to be that to you.  Didn't want to be that when all I was going to be was some bastard's boy serving in your brothers army.  Not when-," He cuts himself off and flushes, and Arya wants to know so desperately what he had been about to say.  "Not after everything we went through." 

Arya can think of a lot of responses to that, none of them good.  Maybe  _I was always a Stark_ or  _it's not like I was the kind of girl that was going to wear fancy dresses and be locked in a tower on my brother's say so,_ but what comes out of her mouth is something softer, words that were laced with something that was almost understanding but didn't quite make it there.  "We were going to be friends no matter what.  Gendry, I-,"  _Gendry, I think I love you._ "We take care of each other.  Together.  That's how we made it through.  I wasn't going to stop just because I made it home."

"But you get it, don't you?"  He wanted her to understand, that much was clear.  Wanted her to forgive him, not that it was necessary.  Arya had forgiven him as soon as she saw him.  "Why I wouldn't be able to take that?"

She did.  That doesn't make her feel any better. 

"You're a lord now."  

He smiled, gently, the same gentle self deprecating smile he had worn that night in the tent.  "I'm still just a bastard."

"You're a Baratheon."  She doesn't know why she was putting so much stock in that, only that with the fact of his naturalization all kinds of doors had opened for him, doors that Gendry doesn't even think to consider.  "Your father was a king.  You have the blood of kings, Gendry, don't you remember?"

Arya had slipped off the horse and was standing at his side, gripping to his arm so tight that it had to hurt, but she had to make him understand, had to make Gendry see that whoever he had been back in fleabottom, he had either left that person behind long ago or there had never been anything unworthy about him at all.

"A king's son that got left behind.  You can't possibly-,"

"I don't care."  She tugs him down so he can look in her eyes, and they are so close, and if Gendry would only lean in a little further, Arya will kiss him, she swears it, she will.  "Do you understand?  Forget your father, forget being a Baratheon, you're enough."  He wasn't leaning down.  He looked terrified, and also slightly like someone had hit him over the head.  "Gendry from Fleabottom was always enough for me."

 

 

 

 

 When Arya sleeps, she dreams of dead men.

Not the whitewalkers.  She thinks that she would be able to take that, because she had never seen them, and the things that you imagine can't quite ever match the terror that comes with the fear that you know.

These men were hers.  Her faces.  Her ghosts.

There's a room full of Frey's.  They aren't dead, but they are dying, and this time it is not their father's face they are looking at but her own, and Arya finds that it is much more difficult to kill someone when there is no mask for her to hide behind.  It's only in her dreams that she feels guilty, because when she wakes there is the memory of her mother and her brother and the sister-in-law she never got to meet, the way they ripped open her belly to get to the babies that would cement Robb's forces, but in her dreams they are only people whose sins she can't remember- just sons looking to their father, mothers looking towards their children, gasping for air, clutching at their throats and their stomachs and clawing at their faces, slumping over the floor, their last breaths echoing against the gaping ceiling and stone walls, and Arya thinks that it is a terrible thing.

There are the soldiers.  There is Meryn Trant, and the Tickler.  The boy from the stables that day, the wound in his stomach pouring out an endless supply of blood, him trying to catch it all in his hands, but there is so much that it pours over his palms but like some macabre version of the fountains that surround the Red Keep, and Arya wants to help him but doesn't.  There is even Littlefinger, gasping, tied to the wall with a chain wrapped around his neck and twisted up in his limbs, face paling and purpling in an endless rotation of his imagined dying moments, mouthing his lies and his protests the whole time, the words inaudible except for the slightest hiss.

And there's Micah.

The butcher's boy.

"I'm sorry."  She always talks to him, when she sees him.  Arya had asked the measter but he had confessed that he never heard of dreams like this, and could only offer suggestion that it came from the things she learned in Bravos and said that a sleeping potion might stop it.  "I never meant for you to get hurt."

There are bruises on his arms and his legs.  The side of his face is crumpled in like it was a bucket that someone had given a vicious kick and on his clothes there are old blood stains.  In his chest, a wooden sword is buried up to the hilt.

"I only wanted to learn how to fight."  Arya reaches out to touch him, but falters, turning craven at the last moment just like she always does.  And just like always, Micah flinches, not from her reaching out but from the lack of follow through, and it's only then that he begins to look upset.  "I didn't mean-,"

She trails off, and Micah opens his mouth, rasps out an accusation about her and the hound.  Reaches towards her with his bruised and bloodied hands, and Arya stands still to let him, not sure if what is about to happen is an attack or an embrace.

She always wakes up before she can figure it out.


	8. Chapter 8

When the watch sounds the alarm, Arya is asleep.

It takes her a moment to realize that something was wrong- preparing for battle here was not like the men getting ready for war back at Winterfell, or running from the faceless men at Bravos.  Here, it was silent, the wind snatching away the sounds before the men could even make them, the snow softening the endless clamor that normally comes as weapons and horses and men shift to shore up the defenses, but Arya still knows within a moment that the whitewalkers have come, because the horn is sounding so loud it seems to shake the snow off the top of her tent, once, twice, a third time of that long drawn out cry, and even Arya knows what that means.

She stumbles out of the tent, wrapping her cloak around her, not bothering to get dressed beyond shoving her feet into a pair of boots.  The Hound is waiting for her outside the tent, a sack of provisions thrown over his back, but she just pushes past him.  With all the torches that the men are carrying, he flinches back, but he follows, because that was what he was sworn to do.

 _Some people are worth following,_ he had told her, and then spit onto the ground, and Arya was not sure if he meant Jon or Sansa or maybe even Arya herself.   _Some people make it all worth it._

Arya doesn't check to make sure that he's behind her, just pressed through the crowd.  The men, once so proper and polite, do not spare her a second glance.  They have become something animal in their fear, a swarm or a stampede, fallen prey to their own panic, and Arya feels that same fear rise up in her.

"Jon!"  His name rips from her throat and she feels young again, like she was just heading off for King's Landing and trying to keep herself from hugging him tight enough that no one could make her leave.  He wouldn't be waiting for her, wouldn't look for her, too caught up in his duties and his title and probably expecting her to be already on her way out the gates, but Arya knew that this time, she could not leave without saying good bye.  The Hound seems to know it, too, because he does not stop her, just fights behind her, and when one of the soldiers knocks into her a bit too hard, Clegane throws him to the ground with one arm and steadies her with the other.  Arya doesn't bother with saying thank you.  "Jon!"

She might be crying.  She doesn't know.  She makes it across the court yard and slips, tries to make it up the stairs only to have to flatten herself against the wall to get out of the way of a cluster of boys tripping their way down the path towards her.  From their faces, it is not clear if they are fighting or deserting, and even though she tries to make herself small, one of their elbows catches her in the side of the face.  Blood blooms in her mouth and Arya spits it out onto the ground before moving again, the red a vibrant shock against all the snow.

"Jon!"  Her footsteps are light.  The Hound cannot keep up, so she bursts into the queen's chambers without anyone to hold her back, and tumbles right into the middle of a council meeting.  She doesn't have time to be embarrassed about all the faces that have turned to face her (Jon, Tormund, Gendry, the Queen) or the way she must look, with blood streaming from the corner of her mouth and shivering in her nightclothes, just stumbles her way across the room to Jon.

"What are you doing here?"  He kneels at her feet.  He looks half aggravated and half embarrassed, like she is a nuisance that he would rather not have to deal with, but Arya would not let herself walk away without seeing him.  Would not give herself that regret, on top of everything else.  "You should be gone by now."

"We're leaving.  Soon.  I just wanted to say good bye."  He hugs her, murmurs something conciliatory in her ear, and over Jon's shoulder she catches sight of Gendry.  He is holding himself stiff, but they meet eyes, and she wants to run across the room to him, too, but doesn't.  It isn't proper, and pride is always so important to Gendry.  If he wants to, he will have to come to her.  "I didn't want..."

 _I didn't want you to die and me not see you one last time before,_ is what she intended to say, but that cannot possibly be helpful, so she falls silent, clutches at him again, digs her fingers into the fur of his coat.  

"It's going to be fine.  Alright?"  Sansa had told her, once, when she was finally talking about Ramsay and the things he had done to her, how when she saw Jon for the first time since they all went their separate ways, she felt nothing but relief.  It went away a second later, but in the moment, she said that she finally felt like there was going to be someone to take care of her, that she hadn't felt that safe since father was there to hold her.  Arya understood.  "But you need to go."

"No."  Arya was always stubborn.  She doesn't know why either of them pretended that she would be willing to go without a fight.  "I'm not leaving you here.  I can help."

"You're going."  He doesn't look like her brother.  He looks like a fighter, like a stranger, like a king.  "That's final, Arya, this was the plan from the beginning."

"I can't just  _leave,_ " She started, maybe thinking that this, like so many other things, was something that she could push her way through.  That if she kicked hard enough and screamed loud enough, Jon would be forced to give in, never mind how that would make the both of them look in front of the council.  Sansa used to do the same thing when father wouldn't let her go riding, and sometimes it even worked.  "Starks don't run away."

"Someone has to warn your sister."  The queen's hand was cold when she touched Arya's shoulder, which was strange. She always assumed that her blood ran warmer than everyone else's.  "The raven's won't make it through the snow.  That's why we let you stay, but now it means you have to go."  Arya wasn't sure if it was true, and wanted it not to be, to be able to think that Jon had let her stay because he missed her and trusted her to make her own decisions, but she also knows that he does nothing just because he wants to.  There is always some deeper motive.  Winter has arrived, and there is no longer any room for weakness, no matter how well meant.  Besides, Daenerys wasn't wrong- in the blizzard, the ravens would die before they even made it to Mole's Town.  "First light, you leave.  And you don't stop until you reach Winterfell."

 

 

 

She doesn't stay for the council meeting.  Arya wants to, but she is terribly aware that she is in nothing but her nightclothes, and the whole time that Jon is talking, Gendry is doing nothing but looking at her.  She knows that he needs to be paying attention, so she gives Jon one last look and then slips out, letting the door close softly behind her.

"Right."  The Hound fell into step beside her, still watching the torches warily.  "Are we leaving now?  Because I swore to protect you, girl, but I also swore that I was never going to fight those fuckers again, and I meant, I don't care if it makes me a corward-,"

He's still talking when she ducks into the tent and falls down onto the pile of blankets, chucking one boot across the room and then the other.  At one point Arya might have been worried that he would steal both their horses and leave, but she isn't anymore.  The Hound loves her like a daughter, and no matter what, he would rather face the whitewalkers than leave without her.  She wishes that she could say she would give him the same loyalty, but Arya doesn't know.  She's learned to be a survivor over everything else.  

When the tent flaps open the second time, she thinks it is the wind, until she hears the sound of someone else's breathing.  There's a prickle of fear, and she can't help but have her hand search out beside her for Needle, but mostly, Arya isn't bothered enough to look.  "First light, Clegane."  She had taken to calling him by the first name, because The Hound was the title that Joffrey had given him.  "Try and rest until then, won't you?"

 _You're going to need it,_ she thinks, and when there's no response she sits up, the motion sending the furs pooling in her lap.  It's not the Hound.

"Oh."  There's a voice in her head telling her that this isn't proper, and that if Gendry was going to stand there in the middle of the tent, than Arya really should reach over and pull her cloak around her shoulders.  The voice sounded like Sansa, so Arya ignored, just like she did with the real Sansa.  "I didn't think I would see you."

That was a lie.  She was hoping that she would see him, and knew that she would go search him out before she left if Gendry didn't find her first.  But she thought it was best to keep up pretenses.  The Sansa-voice in her head seemed to approve of that, which made Arya want to scowl.

"Gendry?"  He still wasn't talking.  Still wasn't moving.  He was pale, though, his jaw clenched so tight she thought it might break his teeth and his hands pressed carefully to his sides.  It was a motion that reminded her of when Jon would grip onto Longclaw, a way to steady himself.  "Are you alright?"

"I only,"  He shakes his head as if to clear it, and when he meets her eyes, he looks a little less likely to be sick.  Arya wishes he wouldn't look so afraid.  She doesn't really know what to do with someone else's fear, having spent so long ignoring her own.  "That first night, you offered to let me stay.  Is that," Arya wondered why this was harder than anything else they had done together.  "Would that be okay?"

She's quiet long enough that Gendry seems to think that he made a mistake.  Arya can see it move over his face, the little flinch of embarrassment, the beginnings of an apology that she neither wanted or needed.

"Yeah."  They had slept together before, of course.  On the walk to the Wall, when he kicked someone away from the spot by the fire and then laid down beside her, protective and glaring at whoever came close, his helm tucked up underneath him.  Then in Harrenhall, him leaning back up against the post with her pillowed up on his chest, his arm around her, and Gendry only half sleeping, always watching.  "Gendry."  She moved to side, gave him more room than he really needed, and pulls the furs back like an offering.  "Course you can."

 

 

 

He's hesitant, is the word for it.  Doesn't seem to think that he should be doing it, even as he kicks off one boot than the other and eases down to lay beside her.  Gendry doesn't seem to think he has the right to move, now that he's done it, so Arya is the one to pull the blankets up over them both, and it is Arya who tucks herself in close to him, laying her palm flat across his chest.  Other than moving his arm a bit to let her press against his side, Gendry doesn't give any sign of knowing that she's there, just stares straight up at the ceiling.

"You can touch me.  I won't-,"  Won't what?  Won't break?  Won't throw him out into the cold?  They both know that none of that really applies to her.  "I'm not afraid."

He squeezes his eyes shut like it pains him.  "I am," and the words come out in a puff of fog, his breath mingling with the cold air, and the reminder of the chill makes Arya huddle closer.  "I'm so scared, Arya."

She doesn't want to tell him not to be.  Doesn't know how to make him feel better, can only lay there, feel the skip of his pulse underneath her fingers.  What she wants to do is tell him that he won't have to do it alone, that she'll be right there beside him just like she had been for everything else, but she doesn't, because Gendry will be staying here and she will be going back to Winterfell.  The only other option is to ask him to come home with her, but he won't.  She doesn't think she'd love him like she does if he would turn out to be the type of person to run when he's afraid, even when that fear is justified.

"It's just one fight.  And then you can come home." Arya doesn't think that will make him feel better.  Didn't really expect it to, but it's what she always told herself, when there was something that she didn't want to do- one more mile, one more day, one more offering to the god and then she can run along back to Winterfell.  And besides, her father had once told her that being coddled isn't good for men about to go into battle, even if it's what they think they need.  "You can come back home and stay with me, and you won't ever have to fight another bloody thing."

"You'll do the fighting for me, I suppose?"  He's smiling, at least, and he's reached up to take her hand in his, placing them both against his lips.  

"Yes."  The word is a little biting.  Arya hasn't learned how to be soft, even when the situation calls for it.  "And we'll go to those oceans, like you said.  The blue ones."

"And you'll be my lady," He replies, just like he's supposed to, only she has the feeling that he means something different, that agreeing with him would mean making a promise that she doesn't understand.  

"Yours," she whispers back, and she holds onto him tighter, not sure what else to do, not really even sure what they are saying, only sure that he is going off to fight and that he might die tomorrow and Arya isn't even entirely confident that she will make it back to Winterfell before the whitewalkers catch up to her.  Thinks that this might be their last night together, and feels the tears sting her eyes.  Arya looks away from him, because her fear does not need to join his, not when Gendry is trying so hard to be brave.  

He doesn't say anything for a while after that, long enough that she's starting to think that he had fallen asleep.  "I just wanted to know," He says, and the words brush against the shell of her ear, the tenderness and fear in them making her screw her eyes shut to stop the flow of the tears that had suddenly appeared, "What it felt like.  Just in case I," He falters, and his grip tightens around her, and Arya's breath hitches, but Gendry doesn't seem to even notice.  "Just in case."

 

 

 

When Arya wakes up, Gendry is gone.  Jon is up on the wall, somewhere she can't reach, and the Red Woman is waiting with two horses, the Hound glaring at the ground beside her.

"Arya."  Her voice is deeper than any other woman's Arya had ever heard before.  "The King sends his regards."

Arya doesn't answer, just places one foot in the stirrup and swings herself onto the saddle.  The Hound spits on the ground and moves to join her, and Arya tries to channel every bit of the royal blood everyone keeps pretending she has by staring down at the Red Woman.  She likes it when other people are shorter than her, though the fact that Arya has to climb on things to do it sort of ruins the effect.

"The Darkness," The Red Woman says, unbidden, unprompted, reaching up to grab Arya's chin just like she had the other time, her nails digging into Arya's skin.  She wants to shove her away but doesn't, because Arya had learned that whatever this woman is, she isn't a fraud like Davos liked to pretend.  Arya might not have made it to be a faceless man, but she had spent a long time in Bravos, and she had learned the truth of the god they serve.  When the priests have something to say, it's best that you listen.  "It's fading."

There's a cry from behind them, and then two echoing screams of the Queen's remaining dragons.  "Go."  She pushes away from her, and horse gives a start, moving forward a few steps before Arya pulls it still.  "I'll give your brother your love."

Arya stares at her for a moment, trying to figure out what to say, wondering if she had to say thank you, but then the dragons scream again and the wall turns into fire.

"Come on, girl."  The Hound's face is set.  He is terrified, but not of the dragons, and not of the fire.  "Time to go."

This time, she doesn't bother protesting.

This time, she knew it was time to go.


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> guess who doesn't know a thing about horses? Me. So if things sound weird here, that's why.

One of the horses was dead.

Well.

Dying.

" _No._ " She crossed her arms, staring over at the Hound, who wouldn't even look at her, just kept looking at the fallen horse like he wanted to murder it.  They had only gotten a day's ride away from the Wall before the snow started coming down even thicker than Arya would have thought possible, and without being able to see the path, Arya had sent her horse sprinting right through a thicket of trees, where it promptly tripped over a tree root and sent them both sprawling.  Arya had gotten up, after a few frantic yells from the Hound, but the horse had stayed down.  One of its legs had snapped.  A clean break, she knew, and likely to heal, but they didn't have the time.  "I'm not getting on that horse."

"Girl."  He almost sounded gentle, in as much as the Hound could be gentle.  He never had been before, not when he was delivering news of her sister or when he had carried her away from the wreckage of the Red Wedding at the Freys, and not when he watched her reeling off her list of names in the darkness.  "Get on the horse."

"I can't  _leave_."  It surprised her, her unwillingness to get on the horse.  Arya had considered herself willing to do whatever it took to survive, but here was the important part in that plan- she does whatever she needs to do so she and her friends can survive  _together,_ and never before had she been in a situation like this, where it needs to be one or the other.  Sansa and Jon are both in the practice of sending people to their deaths, both know what it's like to look at the people who serve them and ask them to die in the Stark name.  "We'll walk back to the village, steal a horse, we've done it before,  _Sandor,_ please."

She had never called him by his first name before.  It sounds strange, and it surprises him.

"There won't be time.  They're coming, child."  His hands, when he places them on his shoulders, were a feather light touch, just enough to push her back.  Arya knows that if she does not listen to him, he would throw her on the horse anyways, and by the time she cuts herself free of the ties, both the horse and Arya would be miles away.  Far enough away, the Hound new, that Arya would be too smart to turn back.  Neither of them are willing to risk their lives for lost causes.  "I promised your brother I'd get you home safe."

Promises.  Arya had so many people make promises, so many people swear their swords to her protection.  She's found that the only person that she can trust is herself, and finds that she isn't even surprised when the Hound turns out to be the exception to the rule.  He always did have a peculiar sense of loyalty.

 _Men do what the world makes them,_ her father had said, when one of the servant boys that Arya was friends with had gotten caught stealing one of Sansa's pieces of jewelry.  Arya had screamed and cried and kicked him in the shins until Robb pulled her away.  She never got to know what happened to him, but she has an idea now- the wall.  The wall, and he's either dead or about to die.   _But that is not who they are inside, you'll find._

She hadn't bothered to ask him what women do.

In her experience, no one was ever very interested.

"You'll die," She choked out, and felt the tears slipping over her cheeks, hot and then freezing, and Arya wonders if she will have the frostbite marks that she had seen on the skin of some of the wildlings.  She doesn't think she would mind, even though they would be ugly.  Arya never was very pretty, and she likes the idea of this moment sticking to her forever.  "They'll come, and they'll kill you, and then someone will have to kill you all over again."

 _Maybe me,_ she thinks, and that makes her have to swallow down a sob.  Arya doesn't know if she had cried in a situation like this since her father died, and even then, those were short lived sobs.  Maybe she had just ran out of times that she could say good bye to people and be okay.  Maybe it's different, when you know that that person is dying for you.   _Maybe I'll stand there in the middle of the throne room with Bran and Sansa at my backs, both of them with their little vials of poison, and you'll be the one bursting through the door._

"Aye."  He doesn't look pleased at the prospect, but he wasn't afraid, exactly.  The Hound had expected to die long before this.  "Aye, I expect I will."

"I don't want you to die."  She would be getting on the horse.  She knows that.  She knows that, because after a whispered conversation between Jon and The Hound, it was very clear that they really were the messengers.  None of the riders they had sent to Winterfell in the previous week had returned, and none of the ravens could get to the castle.  If neither Arya or the Hound make it back, the castle wouldn't be expecting the whitewalkers when they come.  "Please don't make me leave you behind."

"Come, girl,"  He said, even though now he looks like he's in pain, and he guides her back over to the horse, slips off his cloak to put around her shoulders.  Hers had been ruined in the fall, and Arya had been shivering underneath the rags.  It just makes her cry harder.  "It's not as bad as all that.  Another name off your list, that's all."

She hiccups, tries to draw in a steady breath and fails.  

"I don't want you to die," Arya repeats, stubbornly, still not ready to give up, glaring over at the horse like she could make it stand back up just by willpower.  "Ride with me.  We can share.  We'll just take longer breaks."

"A horse with two riders is twice as slow," The Hound says, and shakes his head.  "It's time to go, Arya Stark."  He grabs onto her hand, folds her half frozen fingers down over the reins.  "It's been an honor to serve you."

 _I've wanted to serve with honor,_ he had said, when he knelt in front of Sansa, his scarred face shining in the firelight.  He really was a terrible thing to look at.   _No man starts out wanting to be the villain._

There are answering words, she knows.  This is the end of a vow.  It's the moment where she releases him from his promise.

"You aren't done yet," is what she says instead, because in the time she had known him it seems like nothing could kill a man like the Hound.  Arya leans over, presses a kiss to his cheek, on the side with all the scars.  It makes his breath hitch, and when she pulls away, there is a tear trailing down his cheek.  "Come to Winterfell," is what she says, even as she kicks her heels into the horse's side.  "We'll be waiting."

 

 

 

 

It takes her another four days.

Arya doesn't sleep.  She lets the horse rest and stares into the fire, let's the horse stop for water and sharpens needle, gives it a moment to rest and stares through the forest and imagines there are shapes moving behind the leaves, like the army might have managed to sneak up on her, even though she knows they aren't.  Jon had told her how to know.

 _It's going to get cold, first,_ he had said, and Arya had only rolled her eyes, because she didn't see how cold could be used as a warning sign in the middle of a blizzard.   _Colder than you thought cold could be, so your breath freezes in your throat before you even get the chance to scream.  So cold the metal of your sword burns to the touch.  Cold enough that you forget everything else, everything except how to be afraid._

She is half dead by the time she drags herself through the gates of Winterfell.  The food had run out, and with how fast the horse was moving, it didn't give her much protection from the cold.  When the walls came into view, she had slipped out of the saddle and walked the rest of the way.  Horses were precious commodities in the winter and with how hard she had been riding, Arya was lucky she made it this far. She figured she could do this much.

Arya doesn't have to wait for the gates to open.  Didn't have to argue with the guards like last time.  She just drags herself through bit of pathway that had been cleared of snow, makes it ten feet in before she falls to her knees, slumping over onto Tyrion's shoulder when he comes to greet her.  

"Lady Stark."  He was always proper, even though he told the most lewd jokes she had ever heard.  Proper even when there was no time to bother with politeness.  "Lady Stark, are you alright?"

She pulls back from him and the world spins, reeling.  Everything was white, the snow spiraling, and Arya could not tell which way was up and which way was done.  The only thing concrete was Tyrion, standing at her side and buckling under her weight as he tries to hold her steady.

He is yelling things, but she cannot hear them. Someone, a man, wraps their cloak around her shoulders and tries to make her stand, but she just clutches tight to Tyrion.  In all the white, the red and gold of Lannister colors are vivid.  He is the only thing that she can focus on.

"They're coming," She says, and her voice comes out in a rasp, dry from the cold and raw from the way she had sobbed, crying half from grief and half from terror.  Arya doesn't even know if she can hear him, but then she sees the fear on his face and knows that he had.  "They're coming."

 

 

 

When she wakes up, Sansa is sitting by her bed, working on her embroidery.

It makes her choke out a laugh, because it was such a  _Sansa_ thing to do, sit there working on her needlework while a war raged around them.  Though, Arya supposed, with the snow coming down as it was, they were going to be trapped inside for the next several years.  There would be nothing to do but needlework.  Even Arya might attempt it again.  It might be more endurable, with no one snapping at her about how her lines weren't straight.

"There you are."  Sansa slipped out of the chair and knelt by the bed, ever graceful.  She was made for moments like this.  "What happened?  The Hound-,"

Arya just shook her head and bit down on her lip, trying to blink back the burning that had suddenly appeared in the backs of her eyes.  "The horse tripped," She managed, pushing the words out from behind her clenched teeth, and beside her, Sansa reached for her hand.  Arya snatched it back.  "My fault.  The Hound, he-,"

"He did what he was sworn to do.  Nothing more," Sansa said, and Arya wondered how many men had died for her, if she feels guilty, if she was only saying this to make Arya feel better.  She hoped that she was only saying it to make her feel better.  Arya wouldn't know what to do with a sister who thought her servant's jobs were to die.  "Nothing less."

"I did what I had to."  Arya reached out and took her hand, clenching it so hard that her knuckles turned white.  There's a bottle of something sitting on the bedside table, and for a moment Arya starts, panicked, rearing back from her like a horse that had gotten startled, but Sansa pulled her back, voice low and soothing.  It was only medicine, after all.  Medicine for a fever.  No point dreaming up daggers waiting in the darkness.  There were plenty of real things that want to kill her, she doesn't need help from her imagination.  

"I know."  Sansa sat on the bed beside her and pushes the stray hairs away from Arya's face.  The chill from her fingers felt good on her hot skin.  "That's what we always do."


	10. Chapter 10

It's terrible, the waiting.

Arya mentions it to Sansa one night, when they are both standing staring out over the side of the castle wall, both of them squinting through all the snow to find what might be hiding behind it.  Sansa just laughed.

"Yes," She said, and there was something alien in her movements, in the toss of her head and the way that her fingers were curled around the windowsill.  Sansa had taken to wearing men's clothing around the castle when she wasn't holding meetings.  The better to fight in, she had said.  Arya thinks that is an apology for that night with the poison.  "Waiting always is the worst part," It's her quoting voice.  Sometimes she pulls out the lessons she had learned up at King's Landing, and her voice is always the same, a warped version of the little girl who used to know every word to every last lovely song.  This one, Arya knew, was one that she learned from Cersei.  Arya hopes that the two get to meet, if only for Sansa to tell her how much she had learned from her, right before Arya gets to cross another name off her list.  "Especially for the women."

Not, of course, that they hadn't been busy.  There was the last remaining harvest to pile up in their stores and take stock of, fruit to preserve, meat to smoke.  Horses to examine and decide whether to butcher or bring within the gates ( _the crypts had been turned into a stable, and Sansa looks like she wants to cry every time she walks by, but Arya knows better.  The dead are dead, and need nothing but the living._ ), firewood to bring in from the woods outside the walls, floors to scrub and fire to build and weapons to forge, battle lines to draw up, letters to write, always letters, all of them to lords and ladies and measters of the south, warning them of what's to come.

Arya's not confident that any of them are listening.

"Arya!" The paper that she was writing on gets ripped out from underneath her hands, and the quill makes a black streak through her words.  Sansa glares down at her.  "You can't say that!"

"I wasn't going to send it," She shoots back, crossing her arms and glaring right back.   Arya had been sitting here for so long that her hand was starting to cramp, and every time she picked up the pace to catch up to the pile of letters that Sansa had been sending, Sansa snaps at her to slow down because no one will be able to read her writing.  Across the table, the measter just glares, and she feels an undeniable pang when she remembers that it isn't Measter Lewin.  "I was just having a bit of fun."

"Just wasting parchment, you mean?"  It feels like before, when the two of them were always at each other's throats, snapping at the slightest provocation.  Arya is amazed that they can still be able to squabble like they do, but with the coming war, their tempers are stretched thinner than ever.  Only Bran seems to be calm, but his absence of emotion tends to be another source of worry rather than soothing.  She is ready to be on her feet, thinks of slamming a dagger between Sansa's fingers just to scare her, but then Sansa's face softens.  "Just do the seals," She says, her hands fluttering over at the pile of loose parchment that had been gathering on one of the tables, and Arya knows it as close to a compromise as they will be able to get.  "Gods knows that you're terrible at diplomacy, anyways."

 _That's why we have you,_ Arya thinks, but doesn't say it.  Truly, the North would have been lost without Sansa, no matter what the men like to say about Jon.  She was the one that won them Winterfell, she was the one that held the men together when they were most likely to abandon them, and now she was the one shoring the defenses for the only fight that mattered.

"I don't know why we're bothering," is what she actually says, dripping a bit of wax onto the first letter and biting back a snarl when she sees that it is addressed to Cersei.  Her last warning, apparently.  "They're not going to listen.  It sounds like a fairy tale.  Though maybe," When they were little, long ago, Arya used to babble constantly, every thought that came into her head.  She would talk through dinner, and through needlework, and when they were supposed to be falling asleep, and Sansa would be forced to listen.  Sometimes, she was even interested in what her little sister had to say.  She isn't interested now.  "They'll make it far enough south and finds it's too warm for them and just melt, like a snow man."

Arya had never made a snowman before.  Sansa had, and Arya was always lying in wait to knock it down.  She had always found the process of making something tediously boring, and the seconds of destruction it took to knock them over much more fun.  It seems like a rather large thing to miss, now that she thinks about it.

"It doesn't matter," Sansa said, and rubs at a mark at her neck, another phantom wound that Joffrey or Cersei or Ramsay or her aunt had left behind.  It makes Arya want to punch something.  "They'll learn soon enough."

 

 

 

On one of the last days before the war, Arya goes down to see father.

She hasn't been there before.  Hadn't ever like going down there as a child, either- it was too dark, and too cold, and even then Arya didn't see the point of it, going down and visiting bones.  She had never bought into the things that father said about honoring their past and their souls being able to tell whenever their graves were being visited, so when she did go down, it was normally to hide from Sansa or to stare at the faces of one of her great-great-great grandfathers, one of the ones that made the stories.  

Arya's not sure that she really believes, the thing about their ghosts being able to listen if you speak to the stones, but she thinks that she owes it to father to try, just in case.

She had lit a candle, and in the darkness it throws shadows all over the walls, making her think that someone is behind her every time the wind whips into the doorway.  Arya stares at the place where her father's likeness should be and wonders if she would feel differently if the statue was there.  Probably not.   Sansa can keep what comforts she wants, but Arya knows the truth- this is no holy place.  She had learned the lesson long ago that bodies are only bodies and bones are only bones, with no souls rattling around in their skulls.  

"I thought I might find you down here."  The voice startles her, but Arya doesn't jump.  Her hand reaches for Needle at her side, but other than that she is pulled taught, every muscle in her body poised like a trap ready to spring.  "Would you mind coming to me?  My chair, you know."

Bran.

He had sought her out, and found her, and didn't bother to wonder if she might like to be alone to pay her respects, though maybe he knew that she didn't really believe in the things their father taught them about the dead and what comes after.  Bran knows everything, now- everything that had ever happened or will happen, everything that Sansa had gone through, all the things that Arya had done.  She wonders, with a sickening swoop that sends her cheeks flaming, if he knows about those nights at the top of the wall with Gendry, if he had been spying on her the night they shared the tent.  Because he does spy on her.  He had made that clear from the very first day.

"You didn't have to come down here."  Her voice is too loud, but she makes no effort to lower it.  Bran doesn't even look at her, just keeps staring back into the crypts.  "Would you like to visit?"  She already knew that he wouldn't.  She remembered Bran as being someone who was a little soft, a little weak, a little to attached.  A little boy who had not yet grown into a man.  This Bran is something different.  He seems to care about them still, out of some sense of loyalty, but he also doesn't really seem to know any deeper feelings about anything, not fear or anger or happiness.  "I can carry you."

"No."  His voice was clipped, and he makes an effort to soften it.  "No, thank you.  I was just looking at Lyanna."

Bran had become obsessed with Lyanna, ever since he and Sam Tarly had found the truth about who Jon was.  Who his father was.  

"Well."  She really was going to try and do this "paying her respects" thing right, if only so she could think that the dead was giving her some sort of permission to go off and be some sort of soldier.  Like Nymeria, but in the snow.  And against dead people.  And with dragons, so maybe not like Nymeria at all.  "If you don't want anything, else,"  She makes a vague gesture back towards where she had came from.

"No, I did.  I wanted to tell you," His brow furrows, like he either can't quite remember or can't figure out how to shape the words.  Arya has noticed that he has trouble with that sometimes, figuring out how to speak like she and Sansa do.  She appreciates the effort, but whenever he tries it becomes more obvious how much of the old Bran is missing.  Though maybe everyone thinks that about her, too.  "I wanted to tell you that no one blames you for the things you had done.  But you need to stop now."

The words hit her like a punch to the stomach.  She had known, from a muttered conversation with Bran, that he knew everything she went through.  That she had watched it, and she doesn't understand why.  It had never occurred to Arya that he had been looking through her past, too.

"Those men were bad men.  And those people that died for you, they died because they were good people.  Stupid people, sometimes, lost people, but good." His words send her spiraling back to the Hound, left alone in the cold without a cloak, watching her disappear into the snow, and she feels a fresh wave of remorse that she hadn't made him get on the horse, too.  Clearly, they had had enough time for a slower ride.  "But you need to stop, now."

"I'm not going to stop fighting."  It felt like she had been slapped, she was that knocked off balance.  Out of everyone that she thought might demand her to give up her sword, she never thought it would be her brother.  "If that's what you're asking, you're more stupid than you look."

He tilts his head, like she didn't make sense to him.  Maybe it was the anger that confused him.  He certainly hadn't seen anything wrong with the things he said to Sansa. 

"Not the fighting.  We need fighters now more than ever.  But the killing," He adds, and Arya closes her eyes, feels herself sucked back into her dreams again.  "That needs to stop.  Let go of your names, Arya.  Let go of your names and maybe you'll find peace."

Arya doesn't answer, just barks out a laugh and then walks around him, leaving Bran to wheel his way out of the crypts on his own.

 

 

They get a raven.

There's a note, tied to it's leg, and it's a miracle that it made it through the snow. It means Jon is close to them.  

It means the white walkers are close to them.

 _They are coming,_ is what it says, in Davos's scratchy handwriting.  Sansa's hands shake as she reads the message to them, and beside her, Tyrion makes a motion like he wants to grab her hand but thinks better of it at the last second.   _Seven save us, they are coming._

"Gods," someone says, and across from her, Tyrion is swearing, an impressive string of curse words that would have made Catelyn wash his mouth out with soap.  Words that he normally wouldn't say in front of a pair of ladies, no matter how drunk he might have been.  "What do we do now?"

"Now?"  Sansa throws the letter back onto the table and stands up, skirts swirling.  She's in formal dress today, with that necklace of Aunt Lysa's that she always wears.  Sansa had confessed that she likes it because she thinks that it could be used as a weapon, if it came to that.  Arya had laughed and told her that she could get her much better weapons than that.  "We open the gates."

There's a startled laugh from someone behind them.  One of the soldiers, undoubtedly, someone who still has it in their head that women can't wrong.  Arya finds it amazing how many times men can be proven wrong and still stick to their assumptions. 

"We open the gates," She repeats herself, and it's clear from her tone that she had heard the laugh and didn't take kindly to it.  "And we send out riders.  Volunteers only, who know the risks, who are willing to search out those who seek shelter.  To the villages, and the farmers, and anyone else they may come across, friend or foe.  Find anyone that is out there, anyone who will be willing to come, and tell them to bring all the food that they can carry."

"My lady," One of the knights of the vale stepped forward.  "Do we have room for that?  For all the?"

He doesn't finish his sentence, but Arya can guess the rest.  All the farmers.  All the peasants and the poor.  

Sansa glares at him, and even though her hands are still shaking at her sides, she looks so very brave.  "We'll make room."

This time, Tyrion doesn't hesitate before grabbing her hand, and Sansa smiles down at him, dazzlingly, blindingly, brilliantly.  And why not?  It's the end of the world, after all.

 


	11. Chapter 11

This time, it's morning when the trumpets blare.

 _Once for riders returning.  Twice for wildlings,_ Jon had taught her.   _Three times for the dead men._

This was only once.

Arya and Sansa both stand up at the same time and race to the window, jostling each other to get the best view.  In Arya's head, they had both been standing at the gates, watching the army roll in.   They hadn't been recounting stories of Sansa's time with Tyrion while Arya was away while buried under mountains of furs, and they weren't in their nightclothes, and Arya certainly didn't have to help Sansa cinch up her corset.

"Oh, leave it," She said, yanking a brush through her hair.  "Leave it, leave it, it makes it hard to run anyways."

 _Terribly improper for a lady,_ Arya wants to say, but she is too scared, and there is something wrong with her, something that has her smile stretched stiff and frozen on her face, like maybe it's stuck there.  It doesn't take her long to dress, but Sansa has already left the room, so by the time she makes it out to the courtyard, Sansa and Tyrion are already there, arguing.

"They'll need horses, supplies.  Help for the injured.  That takes men, and men need a  _leader,_ my lady, we can't just send them loose, they're likely to ride all the way home."  It was sort of funny, the two of them surrounded by horses, the men watching as they bicker.  Arya wonders if Tyrion knows that he's standing on his tip toes in order to be closer to Sansa's height.  She wants to tell him that it's a lost battle.  "I'm the only one left."

"You?"  The tone in her voice was a bit offensive.  Sansa seemed to realize it a bit too late.  "You don't need to go.  You need to stay here," And then, clearly throwing logic to the wind and out of pure desperation, Sansa adds, " _I'll_ go, if someone needs to go, they're my men."

"Send a lady in my place?"  He's very good at being a diplomat, too, Arya thought.  They would have been very powerful allies to have, if only they weren't fighting a dead thing whose only goal was to stamp out all life.  "Do you  _want_ everyone to take me for a craven?"

Men are very obsessed with being brave, and not nearly concerned enough with being alive.  "I can go," Arya added, but neither of them paid any attention.

"I  _want_ you to be here.  With me.  Behind the walls."  Sansa's voice dropped.  "I want you safe."

"My lady, there is no such thing as safety.  I think you of all people should have learned that by now."  Tyrion kissed her hand, his touch lingering longer than it should have.  He didn't even have to bend to do it.  "I will come back to you.  I promise."

Sansa doesn't answer. 

Arya understands.  They've seen a lot of broken promises.

 

 

 

 

 

The Queen comes first, then Jon, both of them on horses and covered in blood.

"Where are the horses?" It's the first thing out of his mouth, not a hello or a how are you or a  _please take me to the measter I'm bleeding terribly from this wound in my side you see,_ just jumps down from his horse and shoves his reigns at the person who had come to collect the horse, not seeming to notice that it's a farmer woman that he'd never seen before.  In fact, if he's surprised at all by the large amount of children and women and maimed and elderly that Winterfell had acquired, he wasn't showing it.  Maybe this was something that he and Sansa had discussed beforehand, or maybe it was just part of war that everyone had known about.  "Where are the horses, Sansa?"

She had changed into her fighting clothes right after Tyrion had left, apparently ready to run after him if she needed to.  This doesn't seem to phase him at all, but her answer does.  "We put them in the crypt," she says, and Jon's steps falter for half a moment before he pushes onward.  Daenerys came after them, finally having gotten free of the horse and her guards.  "But what are you doing-,"

"I'm going back."

"No."  Sansa looked a little crazed.  She didn't look like the Warden of the North at all.  Just like a scared little girl.  "No, you are not going back into that, I forbid it-,"

"Sansa we left those men to die!"  It makes Arya feel better that he wasn't ready to ask people to fall on their swords for him, but she also finds his gallantry a bit annoying.  It's the middle of the war, damn it, and no one had time to chase after their king just because he was stupid enough to think he could win the war singlehandedly.  "I'm not going to hide behind these walls like a coward while they fight."

 _Again with the bravery,_ Arya thought, and was just about to tell him how much of an idiot he was being, or maybe whack him with Needle if she had to when the Queen caught up with them.

"Jon."  Daenerys, too, was drenched in blood.  There was a long cut down her face, and part of the skin by her mouth was loose, flapping in the wind.  It made Arya want to be sick.  "Jon, you need to stay, we cannot go back there,"

"We cannot leave them to die!"

"They are going to die!"  Daenerys, Arya was reminded, had fought more battles then all of them combined.  Had seen more innocent people used as cannon fodder than she could imagine.  Had watched friends die, and soldiers, and a husband.  She knew about sacrifice.  Her crown was built on it.  "And so will you, if you go back out there with your wound untreated and no plan, and we need you alive!  Our men need you alive.  The kingdom needs you alive, Jon Snow."  He would not take the name Stark.  Both Sansa and Daenerys had offered, but Jon had said no.  If father would not claim him in life, he would not do it now.  "Just,"

Arya never figures out what she was about to say, because then another round of men come through the gates, all some degree of burnt and bleeding, and some barely hanging onto their horses.  It's complete chaos, and reminds her of the moments after the battle with the Lannisters, where Arya did not have time to think or even draw a breath, just move from one soldier to the next, stopping the bleeding and binding wounds and trying her best to look for Gendry.  All she wanted to do was look for Gendry, but she was a Stark, and Starks did their duty, no matter how much it hurt them.  It's why Sansa was out here waiting for Tyrion to come back instead of cowering with her poison.  It's why Jon wasn't racing back out to fight.  And it's why Arya didn't say a word when one of the farmer women had barked at her to come help hold someone down while they sawed off his arm.

"Have to do it," They said, clucking their tongues, seeming not very sympathetic at all that they were going to have to saw through blood and bone, like it was the poor boy's fault that he went and got himself frostbite.  "It'll rot, that will, rot and spread and it's useless anyways.  Relax," they added, when the saw first began to bite into the skin and the boy jerked underneath Arya's hands, twisting and turning and forcing her to crawl onto his chest to hold him still.  "It hurts much less than if you got the rot, it does."

The boy didn't sound like he found that to be much of a comfort.

It's where she is when Gendry finds her.  At first, she doesn't even notice, just looks at the boots that have appeared in front of her and thinks, wildly, that they look familiar, and then he is dropping down to the ground on the other side of her, pushing the boy back to the ground.  He doesn't even look at her, just bears down on the kid's chest ( _because he was a kid, so young, younger than  Bran, young like Rickon should be young_ ), and that's how she finally finds out he's okay, with screams ringing in both their ears and blood bursting out over their hands.

"My lady," He says, when it's done, when the wives had stopped their clucking and the boy had stopped his screaming and gone deathly silent instead, and for a moment there is quiet, just the two of them standing in this crashing crescendo of sound.  "Nice to see you again."

"Gendry."  She breathes out his name.  He's bloody, and he's holding one arm funny, and there's a burn spreading up over his neck, but she had seen worse.  Had been imagining worse, had been scanning the faces of the dying men trying to convince herself that he wouldn't be one of them.  "You made it."

"I told you I would.  I told you I would come back to you.  Together, remember?"  He steps closer to her, grabs her by the arms to draw her closer, away from the people rushing by and away from where that poor boy had his arm cut away, and Arya can feel the places where they touched her like they were on fire, his fingers so cold that they burned.  "I-,"

She never found out what it was, because Sansa was at her side, ripping the two of them apart.  For a moment, Arya is confused, and cannot figure out why she is looking like that or what issue she might have possibly had with Gendry, but then she sees the shaking in her hands and the fear in her eyes, and realizes it wasn't about her at all.

"Tyrion."  Sansa says, half pleading and half praying.  "Have either of you seen Lord Tyrion?"

 

 

 

No one, it seems, had seemed Lord Tyrion of House Lannister.  Not Gendry, not Jon, not Davos, not the queen, not the people lying injured on the ground, no one that Sansa had ran to and screamed at for answers, not until they pass a group of wildlings that were readying another round of horses to go out and retrieve more men.

( _Arya had just started to wonder if maybe they shouldn't be sending the men_ out.   _Bringing the wounded in were all fine and good, but eventually, the front line would grow thin and the whitewalkers would push through, and then they would all be here.  And once they made it here, there would be no where for them to run.  Winterfell was supposed to be the Stark's last stand, not the point of attack._ )

"He the half man?"  This one has burns all over his face, too, but they were old scars.  Purposeful scars.  Tyrion had told her about them- there's a mark for every man they had killed.  And this one in front of them- he appeared to be a very good killer.  "Little fella, with the red and gold cloak?"  Both Sansa and Arya and Gendry froze, and he seemed to take it for a yes.  "He was out there.  Brought us the horses.  Brave little guy, too, didn't even flinch at the dragons."

Sansa strode forward, grabbed him by the collar.  She would force herself to make apologies later, Arya was sure, if they all lived that long.  "And where is?"  Her words were steely.  "Where is the half man now?"

"Don't know that, do I?"  He seemed utterly unconcerned.  "He fell behind."

"He fell," Sansa rocked backward, and for a moment Arya was afraid that she was going to faint.  It was clear that Gendry felt the same way, seeing as he reached out to grab her.  "What do you mean he fell behind?"

"I mean he was at the front line.  And then the front line moved back, but your half man stayed where he was.  He might have made it back, if he was a normal size.  But such a little guy," He shrugged, and he did look a bit regretful.  "Hard to make his way over all that snow."

"But his horse," is all Sansa seemed able to say.  "Where did his horse go?"

"Gave it away.  To a girl, out there fighting."  Lady Mormont, most likely.  She insisted on following her men.  Arya tried to go with her, but Lady Mormont had told her not to.  That Arya and Sansa were both much more important with her.   _And besides,_ she had said, her mouth twitched up in a smile,  _Someone has to stay and take care of my women._ "Seemed to think she needed it more than him."

Sansa didn't bother with saying thank you, just whirled on her heel and ran over to where Jon and the Queen were standing, clutching at Jon's cloak in a way that Arya hadn't thought possible from her.  Sansa had always said that she would rather die than beg another man for anything, but she was begging now.  "Tyrion is still out there, Jon.  You have to go get him, please, send someone out to bring him back."

"Sansa."  He pried her hands away from him.  "We don't have the men, and even if we did, he's- we'd be lucky to even see him in the snow, let alone get there and back before the whitewalkers had him."  She looked wildly from Jon to the Queen and to Thormund standing behind them, none of them meeting her eyes but Jon.  "I'm sorry, Sansa."

She choked on a sob and grabbed onto Jon again, and this time, even though she was still facing their brother, Arya knew that she was talking to her.  Sansa never had been the strong one.  She always needed someone to lean on.  It just so happens that that person needs to be her. 

"Please.   _I love him,_ " She said, tears slipping down her face, and she is even pretty when she cries.  "Please save him."

 

 

 

No one notices her.

They pay attention to the men.  Jon, and Thormund, and Greyworm, all of them yelling.  Greyworm saying that he would go, that Lord Tyrion of House Lannister had been a great friend, that the unsullied are not afraid of anything, not even death come walking, and then Melisandei grabbing at him, clutching him, asking him not to go.  They pay attention to Davos when he says that sometimes there is not room for sentiment, that in war, people die, even friends, even the men they love.  And Melisandre out in the middle of it, her red burning in the middle of all the snow like fire, telling them all that the price of loving a great man is knowing that someday that man will leave you, all the while staring at Arya as she grabs one of the horses from the crypt.

It was the horse she rode to Winterfell on.  She wasn't one to believe in luck or the gods or anything but her own sword, but she did know a good horse when she saw one.

No one realizes what she's doing until she's already galloping past them.

"Arya!"  Jon's voice calls after her, cursing.  "Close the gate!"  She heard a cry, and when she looked back, Jon was on a horse, having thrown one of his own men into the dirt to race after her, but he would not follow her.  Would not reach her in time to stop her.  "Close the bloody gate!"

They try, but with the way that the ice had frozen over the hinges, they cannot do it in time.  She slips free, and only let's herself look back once- at Jon barreling towards her on that horse, at the Red Woman smiling after her, Gendry with his hands hanging at his sides and looking like someone had ordered him to be beheaded, and Sansa two steps in front of all of them, looking the way she had when she had sentenced Littlefinger to die.  

 _I can't do the things you can._ Sansa had said, in the moments before, when she was bent over with shaking shoulders.  Bran had made no move to comfort her.   _I'm not strong like you._

 _Don't worry,_ Arya had said back, and tossed Littefinger's dagger from one hand to the other.   _I'll be strong enough for both of us._

She supposes that's what she's doing now.

 

 

 

The ride is long enough that she starts to regret it.

Hours long, actually, which means that she has hours worth of regret.  He could be dead or dying, the whitewalkers could have overrun him, the dragons could have burned him up. He's short enough to have suffocated under the snow, and whose to say she can even find him, with her not being able to see even five feet in front of her?

But she keeps going.  She keeps going because she was thinking of all the people that had died for her- Micah the Butcher's boy and Syrio and her father's men and the last of them, the Hound, helping her up on the horse, left to die in the cold.  She was not going to let another person die like that.  She was not going to make Sansa lose one more thing, maybe her last thing.  Arya doesn't know how much pain that Sansa can take without breaking.

After all she had been through, she deserves to be happy.  Tyrion is her best shot at that.

"Tyrion!"  She had reached the men now.  If any of them are shocked to see a Stark girl barreling her way through the ranks, they don't show it.  "Tyrion!"

 _He was at the front line.  The line moved._ Her horse spun in a circle, and Arya has to duck to keep from being taken out by a sword.  She doesn't know why it was flying through the air, and she doesn't want to look to find out.   _He stayed behind._

Which meant he was out in the in between, that white gap that still existed between the two armies.  Sometimes, Jon had said, the whitewalkers fall back during the day.  She hopes that that's the case here.

"Lady Stark."  She turned, peered over the side of her horse to stare at Bronn.  Sansa had told her to stay away from him, that he was a swellsword and liked to frequent brothels besides, but Arya thought he was nice enough.  She had seen him hit one of the men over the head with a bucket of ale when they had grabbed at one of the peasant women, and that was good enough for her, even though the ale was running out and he had wasted an awful lot of it.  "What are you doing here?"

 _Something stupid,_ she intends to say, but when she goes to speak, there are no words, no air.  She can only stare at him, at the blood and the burns and the men dying at his feet, and Bronn doesn't seem to have the patience for it, just shakes his head and reaches out for her, clearly intending to pull her down from the horse and walk her all the way back to Winterfell, and that snaps her back into a panic strong enough that she has enough strength to urge the horse forward, straight through all the men and their steel and their screams, right between the Queen's two dragons, bursting through where the flames were thinnest.

The horse screams, and Arya can feel the heat of it through her leather, and suddenly understands why all the men were burned.  Her back was scalding, and she can smell how her hair and clothes were smoldering, but she doesn't stop, just races forward.

"Tyrion!"  The scream tears from her throat, and the wind whips it away.  "Tyrion!"

  _It's a needle in the haystack,_ she thinks, and when she hears the shriek from above, she cowers on instinct, then just stares as the jet of blue fire spits across the sky.  Even from this far away, she can feel the heat of it.  "Tyrion!"

There is nothing.  No answer, and yet, she had promised Sansa she would bring him home, and she did not ride hours through the cold to give up this easily.  The snow here was still tapped down, which meant that the men had stood there.   _The front line,_ she thinks, and urges the horse forward again, closer to the dragon, closer to the dead men, trying to find where the footsteps stopped.   _Just find the front line, and you'll find him._

 

 

 

 

She doesn't find him.

What she does find, however, is whitewalkers, miles and miles of them, and even though Jon had warned her and Gendry had told her everything she could remember, Arya knows that nothing they said could compare to the real thing, and that she certainly hadn't been prepared to see it.

"Tyrion!"  Her voice comes out in a croak, and she has to try again.  "Tyrion!"

Tryion, if he's here, doesn't answer, doesn't give any sign to show that she's there.  But impossibly, the man standing in front of the army ( _can you call it a man?_ ) seems to, lifting his head and stretching out a hand to her, to the right.  And, impossibly, Arya can see him, a spot of gold in the middle of all the white.

When she moves forward, it's like it's a sign that they had been waiting for her, sending them all scrabbling forward, towards her and Tyrion.  Ayra doesn't think, just moves, pressing down so low that she is flat with the horse's back, trying to urge her faster even though she is already running at full speed.  She hadn't been in battle before, but Arya imagines that this is what it feels like when men talk about time slowing down- she can think of nothing but Tyrion, not the whitewalkers running towards them, not the dragons fighting overhead, not the men behind her that are running to meet them, and certainly not about how this is not how she wanted to die.

Only Tyrion.

She makes it to him.  Arya is not strong enough to haul him up on the saddle on her own, and he is not tall enough, so she has to jump from the saddle and let him use her as a step, then climbs up after him.  In front of them, two feet away, close enough that it is reaching over to her, is the first of the white walkers, and Arya screams, forgets about the horse and her sword and Sansa and Gendry waiting back for her, forgets about Tyrion and how fear cuts deeper than swords, can think of nothing but its half rotted hand reaching out to close around her ankle, and if Tyrion hadn't been there, Arya is sure that she would have let it drag her off the horse.

Tyrion is the one who takes the reigns and spins them around the face the northmen, and he is the one that keeps an arm around her to make sure that she doesn't fall backwards into the snow.  The horse must be tired, but it is also afraid, which means that even though there is double the weight it moves with the speed of all things being preyed upon, fast enough that Arya cannot hear anything that Tyrion is saying to her, cannot even hear her own screams.  She does not do anything to help, does not even open her eyes again until she hears the shouts of live men and feels the heat of the fires, and when she does open them, she does not look back, only stares up, up like she had stared at sky when her father was beheaded, up at the dragons and their flames and remembers how she thought she would like to see a dragon one day.

What stupid kids they all were.

"It's alright," Tyrion kept muttering to her, and now that they were away from the fight, she was calm enough that she could feel what she could not before- the burn blistering on her arm, the cuts that were oozing blood down her ankle, the aching at her temples.  It makes her cry out, and once she starts she cannot seem to stop, just buries her face against the horse's mane and weeps, trying to forget those  _things_ staring back at her.  "You're safe now."

Gendry was right.

Everything she had heard didn't even come close.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is just like declining in quality isn't it? oh well, hope you like it anyways


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> lol I totally ripped off Hamilton in that bit last chapter where I was like "I need you alive, your men need you alive, the kingdom needs you alive" and I didn't even notice.
> 
>  
> 
> Also, all of your comments are so nice and so very appreciated, and I'm so loving the feedback that I've been getting from you guys. I hope you stick with it until the end, because I really do love playing around with these characters.

They are going through some sort of baptismal rite.

"You are the prince that was promised," Lady Melisandre is saying, and rotates a bit, so she moves from being directly between Daenerys and Jon to standing right in front of him, her hand reaching out to trace over his chest, where the stab wounds lie hidden.  Arya had caught sight of them, once, when she was bursting into his quarters with some message or another- they were still open, gaping things, black at the edges, the dead skin curled and rotting, a reminder of what he had almost been.  "And you-," She turns back to Daenerys, and her smile is beautiful in the firelight, just like everything about her is beautiful, and Arya hates her, hates her even as the firelight pulses in the gemstone at her neck and the flames roar up in the grate standing in front of her.  "You are fire made flesh.  Gifts from the lord of light to fight for the living in this war against the darkness."

Arya had almost screamed when she had been summoned to her father's old chambers and found the furniture pushed to all the walls.  It had been the one room that Sansa had made sure was left empty, even as every other inch of Winterfell was being filled to bursting.  Rulers were allowed their follies, and this was Sansa's- to preserve as much of Winterfell as they could as a shrine to those that they had lost.  

"You have grown with the Lord's blessing.  Been tempered by the fire of the world as steel is formed in the forge."  Arya wants to kill her.  Feels that in her bones, deep in the pit of her stomach, the same way she had felt when she faced Jaimie Lannister or the head of King's Guard or all those people that she had sought out and killed.  "And now the war has come."

A log snaps, falling into the fire and sending sparks spitting into the air, swirling around the Red Woman, but she doesn't even flinch, just closes her eyes as they bite into her robes like there was no greater pleasure in life to be burned.

 _Death by fire is the purest death,_ She had mused, standing off at the window while the measter wrapped the fresh wound on Arya's ankle.  She had come to her to find out what they looked like, these white walkers, if it was as terrible as all the men were saying, even though she must have seen the truth in her flames.  Maybe -and it scared Arya, if this were true- maybe the Red Woman was still hoping that her visions were wrong.   _What is waiting for us out there, that is not a good death._

"Step into the flames."  They've got red silk wound around their hands, Daenerys and Jon do, their skin pressed palm to palm, a bastardized version of the what happens when you are married in the light of the seven.  "Step into the flames and be reborn."

Arya's breath catches in her throat, and she sees the hesitation in Jon's eyes, the half second where he pulls back, but Daenerys, who truly had been born from the flames and faced the fire many times since then, does not hesitate, dragging both their hands towards the flames and the sparks and the red hot coals.  No one had expected it to be that sudden, and they lean forward, all of them in one horrified motion, to see what would happen if Melisandre's magic fails, if the thing that seems to protect Daenerys should fail to shield Jon as well.

"You are the children of the light."  The Red Woman looked as close to happy as Arya had ever seen her.  She looked at peace.  "It is time to face the darkness."

 

 

 

"Are you mad at me?"

Gendry doesn't answer the question.  Doesn't even look at her.  Hadn't looked at her, not since he had knocked on the door to her room with the message she had sent to him still clenched in his fist, holding it so tight that he had ripped the paper.  He doesn't seem to know what to do with her behind closed doors anymore, not when neither of them are pretending that she hadn't purposefully called him to her at a time where the servants wouldn't be around and Sansa wasn't going to be around to supervise.  They don't have time for niceties- death was creeping closer at a pace that wasn't creeping at all, and Jon was going to be sending Gendry off to war tomorrow.

( _Maybe,_ she thinks, guilty for half a moment before she sends the thought away,  _maybe she should have gone to him.  Slipped into his bed like he had done that night at the wall, let him get a good night's rest, under the furs and by the fire so he can soak up what warmth was available to him._ )

"Mad at you?"  His voice sounds a little strangled.  "Why would I be mad at you?"

It's a stupid question.  It makes her want to hit him.  Everything that Gendry does makes Arya want to hit him. 

She doesn't answer it.  Doesn't make any sign that he had talked at all.  "You haven't said anything to me.  Not one word, not since-," Not since she stole a horse and ran out the gates without so much as a word to anyone.  "Since you got back."

It's the cowardly thing, not to say what they are both thinking about, but she doesn't want to bring attention to anything that might start her thinking about the whitewalkers, about the strips of cloth threaded through their ribs and how some of them were so small, so young, just children, that a few of them were wearing Winterfell colors on their backs, so fresh that she could still recognize their faces.  Gendry is not that afraid.

"Since you ran out the gate without telling me good bye?  You could have died."  He swears, then, fluently and loudly and with no thought to the fact that he was in the presence of a lady, and that, at least, made her feel like she could breathe.  It made her feel like they were on the road again, or on the run from Harrenhall, or maybe like she was still walking around with the Hound.  People tend to swear around you when you're with the Hound, girl or no girl.  "I always say good bye to you."

Arya swallows, suddenly finds that there's a lump in her throat making it hard to speak around and tries to swallow it down before she starts.  Arya never had been the type of girl to cry before all of this, but now it seems that it's all she wants to do- she cries every time that Gendry leaves, cries when she thinks of leaving the Hound behind, cries at night when she catches a reminder of her father or her mother or Robb or Rickon.  There are so many things for her to cry about.

"There wasn't time." There was.  He was standing right beside her.  "Jon wouldn't have let me leave if he had known what I was going to do."

Gendry steps forward, realizes how close he had gotten to her, and then steps back.

"Try again."  His jaw is clenched, tight, tight enough that she wonders if it hurts his teeth.  "Give me a real answer."

"Sansa said, you heard her.  She asked me to save him."  Still flimsy, still fake, but better.  "I couldn't just leave him to die."

This time, Gendry doesn't seem to care about propriety or the fact that he was caging her in, forcing her back until the backs of her knees were knocking against the side of the bed, leaving her with no where to go.  "Come on."  His breath was coming out in harsh, ragged bursts, like they had been fighting, or maybe like he wants to fight but is trying to hold himself back.  "You can do better than that."

"If I had said good bye to you,"  _If I had even looked at you,_ "I wouldn't have been able to leave.  I would have stayed, because then I would have been too afraid to leave.  I would have stayed," She says, the lump in her throat suddenly reappearing and her voice cracking and Arya just being so sick of it all, so tired and sorry and so wishing that she had just let Gendry stay asleep, "Because of you."

It seems to appease him, enough that he backs away from her and goes to stand by the fire, stumbling a little, lurching, like he's drunk or been knocked off balance.  Arya follows.

"You're leaving tomorrow."  She's just as close to him now as she had been when he was pinning her against the bed, but it was different now, when she has somewhere to run.  Different because Gendry knows that she's seeking it out, entirely on purpose, with no effort from him.  "Going back out there."

There's a question on his face.  Arya doesn't know what he's asking, but she's going to try and answer it anyways.  "I am."

"Into the cold.  To fight those," Her voice shakes, and she was surprised at the disgust she feels growing inside her, how vile it feels just to shape the words.  "Those  _things_."

His hand has found its way to her face, palm cradling her cheek, fingers edging into her hair.  "I am."

"If I asked you to stay, would you?"  Her own hand reaches up of its own accord, wrapping around his wrist, holding it there.  "If I asked you to stay for me?"

"If you had said good bye," He says, looking pained, "I wouldn't have asked you to stay.  And if I had, you would have gone to save him anyways."

Arya starts crying.  It's a stupid reason, but she thinks that it's called for, seeing that he's about to go off and die, and here he was, telling her the one thing that Arya had spent her whole life wanting to hear, someone giving her permission to be who she was and not expecting her to change into anything that she wasn't.  Someone that didn't except her to need saving, or who wanted to tell her what to do, or wanted Arya to be anything but her.  Someone, beyond not asking her to stay back from a fight, would actually believe in her enough to expect her to win.  

"I'm sorry," Gendry says, panicked, and he steps back from her, dropping his hand like her skin had burned him.  "I didn't mean-,"

Arya doesn't let him finish.  Doesn't even let him step away, not really, just follows him, chases after him the way she had been since he first protected her from Hot Pie and Lommy that day with the night's watch, the way she had wanted to follow him went the Band of Brothers had sold him to the Red Woman for a sack of gold coins.  She had spent her life watching the people she loved walking away, and she wasn't going to make the same mistake with him, not again.

"Don't be sorry.  Don't say something stupid like sorry, just-," He doesn't let her finish what she was going to say, either, just slams his hand into the stone wall and then spins back around to face her, cutting her off half way through her sentence before yanking her close to him, and before Arya really has the time to wonder if she's angry about this or not, he's kissing her, holding like she's something breakable, something pure and clean and worth being gentle with, not like she's something dark and dirty and capable of killing a room full of men that all thought that they were better killers than her.

Gendry is the one to step away first, and Arya doesn't know what to do with that, either, suddenly awkward in her own skin, like she had grown two sizes too big overnight.  It's one thing to kiss someone right before they go off into battle, and it's quite another to do it when they still have the ability to stand in front of you and expect you to have a conversation about it.

( _Or maybe not have a conversation,_ she thinks, wildly, horrified, because with everything she was good at, Arya was pretty sure that this wasn't something that she knew how to handle.  She had always looked at Gendry as something unattainable, someone strong and steady and stable, but this- this was something else entirely, and she really wished that she could go back to staring at him from across the room, even though she knows they both moved past that point long ago.   _Maybe just throw him out of the room and never talk to him again._ )

Gendry still holding her, and as she stands there, his thumb brushes over her lip, lightly, like it wasn't even there at all.  He was still acting like she was something that was capable of being broken, and when Arya finally plucks up the nerve to glance up at him ( _he is so much taller than her, so much stronger_ ) he looks just as lost as she feels.  "Just what?"

He's smiling at her, and Arya tries to remember what she was going to say but can't.  She's pretty sure it wasn't important- the way the conversation was going, she probably just meant for it to be an insult.  "Just nothing.  Just-," She wants to kiss him again.  She wants to kiss him again because she loves him, and because he's going to probably die tomorrow and then so will she, for that matter, and neither Jon or Sansa are here to remind her of what it means to be a princess.   None of that really matters, when you look at the grand scheme of things.  "Just don't leave until you have to?"  She reaches up to him again, tilts her head back so she can look him full in the face, so he knows that she isn't hiding from him, from this.  "Just stay as long as you can."

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> only two sections to this one, but they did get together, so I hope you'll forgive me. Also, I made some aesthetics on pinterests for Game of Thrones characters, and I'm pretty into them, so if you want to check those out, follow the link below:  
> https://www.pinterest.com/always_scritpur/asoiaf-aes/
> 
> As always, come find me on Instagram @olive.writes.fanfic


	13. Chapter 13

According to the stories, the end of the world looked a little bit like this:

Daenerys on her dragon, Drogon, turning and twisting around the spikes of white hot fire that were being hurled at them, out ahead of the front lines where there were only the white walkers, only a sea of dead things, and the men could not hear her but they knew what she had said, had known it from other times they had fought with her, could hear it in their ears like a memory or a premonition, like a fever dream-  _Burn, burn, burn them all_.

The white walkers pressing in on them, a whole walking, writhing mass of them, running and leaping and limping and crawling, how they wouldn't die, how you would have to hack them into pieces so they stayed down, that even when they were cut apart they would still try to get to you, rotten hands reaching out on the ground to pull themselves forward inch by inch even though they could not stand with half their body blown away, how even though they were dead when you killed them they screamed like real men, that when they touched you your skin froze, burned cold and then hot, turned pale and blue and then to a black, like frost bite but not, because with frost bite the feeling went away but the marks they left hurt so bad you would have thought the skin was burning away from your bones, hurt so bad you wanted to check-  _and some of the men did check, they did, screamed something nonsensical and dropped their weapons, ripped off their gloves or their cloaks or their boots and just stared at the handprint or teeth marks that had been branded black into their skin and just when the relief passed over their faces the white walkers would get them, grab them, rip them apart limb from limb or tear into their stomachs, and there were always men that lost their minds in the heat of battle, got so scared they forgot where they were, but none of those men ever had to face a death like that.  It was not, everyone agreed later, a good way to go._

And Jon, Jon moving forward through it all with Longclaw in his hand, his honor guard around him and Ghost out in front, pressing forward, always forward, moving on even when one of them fell, and the men were under orders to clear a path for him, to clear a path for Jon Snow because he was the only one who could end it.  When Sansa heard what he was going to do she had screamed, screamed and begged him not to, but the Red Woman had only smiled, smiled and touched her with a hand so hot it felt like it really was on fire and told her that the Lord of Light wills it, that his will must be done, that the visions were true, and in the night, Jon went forward to meet the Night King with nothing but a sword in hand and Daenerys' fire to light his path, the men around him being picked off one by one-  _Davos split in half by the swing of a sword that no one saw coming, Tormund grabbed around the middle and yanked backwards, their screams loud and climbing but eventually swallowed by the wind._

Jon alone, eventually.

Jon kicking his way through the rubble, sending the whitewalkers that scuttle towards him exploding into ash with nothing but a wave of his sword.  Jon right where he started, alone with Ghost at his side, his fur wet and dark and matted with blood.  Jon going to die.

Jon standing in front of the King of the Dead, yanking off his cloak so it fell to the ground and gets snatched away by the storm, the blood streaked over his face and Ghost laid low at his side, snarling, teeth bared, red eyes bright in the darkness, and the King of the Dead leaping down from his horse with enough force that the men leagues behind them felt the ground shake, yanking his sword from the scabbard, three feet of ice sharpened to a point.  Jon taking the first step, the first swing, getting knocked back into the ground, having to roll, blinded, his eyes filled with snow, fingers half frozen and fumbling, getting to a knee and then his feet just as the sword slams into the earth beside him, again and again and again, the two of them whirling out in front, one dark and one light, the King of the Dead's hands groping, reaching, his eyes a bright blue as he takes a hold of Jon by the neck, and Jon grabbing onto Longclaw one last time, driving it up, up, up- right into the place where the King's heart should have been.

The Night King screaming, dying, crumbling, bursting into chips of ice that scatter into the wind.

Jon on his knees in the snow, hands at his throat, clawing at the marks that had been left and Ghost beside him, whining, nudging at his face.

The whitewalkers falling in one long wave from their King on outward, pausing with their hands outstretched and then breaking, falling like they were puppets whose strings had been abandoned, limbs loosening and mouths gaping and eyes staring outward, blank and finally, blessedly, empty.

And in the sky, the jet of ice blue flame dies with a sputter and Rhaegal falls, slowly, gently, drifting until he hits the earth with nothing but a shaking of the hard packed snow, loud and solemn and final, and above him, his brothers circle, screaming.

The war, it seems, was over.

 

 

 

After, the men pour through the gates of Winterfell without being chased by the dead.

The measter starts a tally of the men with Sam's help so they can report back to the families, pages and pages spread out over the tables of the library, the dead and the dying, the wounded, the living and the lost.  Arya had stared at the mass of bodies for ten minutes before realizing that there would be no way for her to recognize an individual man within all that, so she went to them,

"I need a name."  Unbidden, the words remind her of Bravos, and the answer is almost bursting out of her mouth ( _a girl has no name_ ) before she catches herself, staring down at the measter.  "Lady Stark, if you require my assistance-,"

"Clegane."  She does not miss the look he gives her.  "Sandor Clegane."

There is a rustling of papers and then Sam returning to her, the look on his face so impossibly kind, which is how she knows the answer before he even says it.  She doesn't give him a chance to, just snatches up Needle and turns on her heel, because as long as he doesn't answer, it might not be true.

As long as he doesn't answer, he could still come home.

 

 

 

It almost doesn't feel real.

Jon had come back first, leading his men through the gates of Winterfell, and Sansa had ran from her spot on the balcony so fast that her skirts caught and tore.  Arya hadn't bothered with the stairs, just jumped off the ledge and tumbled through the snow in a decidedly non royal fashion, falling at Jon's knees and crying when he scoops her up in his arms.  Sansa makes it there a moment later, the force of her sending Jon stumbling, and Arya slips in his grip as he tries to find a way to make all three of them fit together, but he is here, he is alive, and nothing else matters.

 _It's over,_ she had thought, but she was wrong.  It's never over.

They are back at the war council again.  Tormund is not there, or Davos, and the Hound is missing, just like he had been since Arya left him in the snow.  But Sansa is there, and Arya, and Jon, and Tyrion, Grey Worm and Daenerys and Missandei, the Red Woman and Jaimie, and Gendry, even though Arya was purposefully avoiding looking at him.  They were all hurt, all blood spattered, but they were all hear.

Tyrion speaks first.  "What now?"

No one seems to have an answer.

"We burn them.  All of them."  Sansa is at the window.  The war was over, and now, finally, Sansa could do the things she does best- lead.  Rule.  Command.  "Burn it down until there's nothing but ash."

 

 

 

 The fires burn for days.

Jon and Daenerys had given the men until first light to mourn, given themselves until the dawn to rest and then they made it out to the yard, climbed onto the backs of the dragons, Jon on Viserion and Daenerys on Drogon.  Sansa and Arya and the rest of them had watched from the towers as the flames started and all the men stood in the court yard, silent, all of them muttering their own prayers to their own gods, each of them saying their own words to lay the dead to rest.  All of the dead.

( _There had been muttering, about how they were burning the soldiers with the white walkers, but Jon put a stop to it._ They were all men, once.  All of them, so we burn them, all of them, together,  _he had said, and there was this look on his face, like he was thinking of something far away.  Maybe the Wall.  Maybe Hornhill.  Arya wonders if that's what he thought every time he put his sword through one of those things, like every time he looked at their faces he saw another one of his failures.  Another one of his sins._ We'll finally put them to rest.)

The smell of it makes her sick.  Arya knows that she wasn't the only one- most of the men had taken off for their families even with it being winter, and Jamie had barricaded himself in his room, letting no one but Brien in.  Sansa had taken to carrying rags dipped in perfume up her sleeves, and Tyrion had done the same, but Arya had tried to push through it.  Tried, and failed, considering how she was leaning over the wall and heaving up her supper down into the snow.

"It's alright," Someone says, and there is a hand on her back, warm and soothing.  "It's alright, Arya.  Just breathe.  Breathe, Arya."

 _Breathing is what got me here,_ Arya thinks, but does what the voice says, coughs and splutters through the rest of it.  When she turns, Daenerys is there, alone for the first time that Arya had seen her.

"The smell," Arya says, waving her hand back where the dead were burning.  "I can't-,

"I know."  She did know.  She had burned people before.  "But the fire is strong.  It'll be over soon."

Arya climbs up to sit on the edge of the wall and the Queen hands spasms, like she wants to drag her back down, but neither of them moved.

"It's Rhaegal, I think.  Why it's taking so long.  The others don't understand, but," Daenerys turns her head to search out the glow of the flames.  "He was mine."

 _They are my children,_ she had said.   _The only children I will ever have._

"He died well.  Died fighting."  It's what you were supposed to say, when someone's son dies at war, even if it was a lie.  Arya isn't really clear on the protocol for when that son was a dragon. "Everyone did."

"Fighting.  His brothers fought.  Viserion fought him.  His brother."  Daenerys clicks her ring on the stone of the wall.  "Brothers fighting brothers, it isn't right."

_Brothers fight brothers.  Sisters fight sisters.  Husbands and wives betray each other.  Everyone fights, everyone hates.  It's a side affect of love._

"That wasn't his brother anymore."

Daenerys turned to her.  "Do you think he knew that?"

Arya thinks of Bran, his eyes that don't ever seem to see her, the distance in his voice, the way he says things, warped and wrong and like a slap in the face even when he means to be gentle.  Thinks of her mother with her throat cut down to the bone, of Robb with his head switched out for the wolf's.  Thinks of Sansa and her screaming at night, of Jon and his black burnt wounds that had sunk into his stomach.  

"He knew he was dead," Arya says, because she considers herself to be an expert on those sorts of things.  "And a dead thing isn't anything at all."

 

 

A lot of men come back in the next few days, straggling in from all corners of the North.

The Hound is not one of them.

 

 

 

Gendry comes for her.

She knows it's him ( _can pick out the rythym of his footsteps, hears his muffled voice calling through the door_ ) but she doesn't move to let him in, just presses her head back down to the window pane.  Arya had settled herself here when she woke up, staring out over the castle walls to where the smoke was swirling up from the sky, the after affect of the still dying flames waiting out in the empty land out in front of Winterfell.  She had meant it to be only for a few moments ( _a breath, a pause, a reprieve_ ) but then she was shoving away breakfast and ignoring summons from her sister and not answering the door when Jon came calling.  It's a surprise that Sansa hadn't come to drag her out by the hair.

( _The Hound would have, if the Hound was here.  The Hound wouldn't even have bothered with knocking, just barged right in with the door swinging open so hard it bangs against the wall, and she would have screamed at him, screamed and thrown herself at him, kicked and scratched and screamed without bothering to use any of the techniques she had learned at Braavos because she wanted to throw a tantrum more than she wanted to hurt him, and eventually the urge would fizzle out and she would be left standing in the middle of her room, able to slip into the skin of Lady Stark once more._ )

"Arya?"  His voice, again, louder this time.  "Arya, can I come in?"

There's another splash of silence and then he pushes on the door, seeming surprised when it swings open without being blocked.  

"I wanted to see you," He says, and the words are like a knife.  "You haven't come to find me.  I thought you would have."

It's a lie.  Not a lie, exactly- a misrepresentation of sorts, where he seems to have forgotten all those long hours they spent in Jon's chambers with Sansa and the Queen, the conversation going round and round in circles while the two of them eye each other from their spots on the wall.  And of course, there was that moment right after the battle, where she had fought her way through the sea of soldiers until she was standing right in front of him, the empty space between them feeling like a mile, just long enough to reassure herself that he had not been hurt, and then all the hours where she watched him from her spot on the ramparts, keeping track of his figure cutting through his crowd.  There had been a lot of moments where they were able to see each other, but she knows what he means- the two of them, alone, able to say what they wanted without listening ears, do what they wanted without the watching eyes of her brother and sister.

"I'm watching the smoke," She says, instead, and continues dragging her finger through the frost painted on the glass.  She'd already drawn a crude version of a dragon, and stick figure soldiers, and now she was working on a wolf.  She and Sansa used to do this after their lessons, on cold days, making momentary murals on the glass.  They'd drag their mother and father and Robb and Jon to look at them, and everyone that saw them would smile and clap and ooh and ah, telling them how good that they were, but even then, Arya knew it was a lie.  Most times kindness is just the kind of lying that you can forgive.  "I thought it would be gone by now."

Gendry doesn't answer her, just squeezes himself onto the other side of the windowsill.  It's big enough for her but barely big enough for him, and she watches for a moment as he tries to make himself fit, but then she twists herself around to give herself more room, uncurls from the hunched over ball that she had folded herself into and lets her back fall against the chill of the stone wall, stretches her legs out until they laid across his lap so he had more room to sit.  

"It's probably just ash by now.  There was a lot," he stops, swallows hard, and one of his hands settle down to wrap around the back of her calf.  "There was a lot to burn."

"I know."  Her voice is harsh.  Too harsh.  She keeps trying to be gentle, but it was like the world had wrung it out of her.  "I saw."

She doesn't say that she was there.  Doesn't have the right to, really- fighting her way through their own men on horse back and standing in the empty stretch of now between the living and the dead doesn't really count, not compared to those who had seen them up close, that had seen their friends and brothers be torn apart by the opposing army.  A few moments is nothing compared to the days that they had spent out there, and she knows it.

"I remember."  He takes up her hand, presses his lips to the inside of her wrist.  "I could have killed you for that."

Arya laughs, and then shivers.  It was cold, and she was in nothing but loose fitting pants and a too big shirt that she had stolen from Jon's wardrobe, her feet and last few inches of her legs bare.  Sansa would be scandalized.

"They were terrible," She says, even though she does not want to be talking about them.  Some sort of dull, left over horror was drawing the words out of her, making her talk about them to whoever is willing to listen.  "I never thought- and when they touched me,"

They both look to her ankle, where the blue black skin had frozen over.  It's a terribly ugly mark, and she doesn't want to look at it, much less draw Gendry's attention to it, but everyone knows that it was there- had heard her screaming when she slipped off her horse, had watched her rip at her boots until she could get to her ankle, had all fell around her when they saw the hand print burned into their skin.  The burning had stopped by now, but it was still colder than any other part of her, seeming to seep the heat from the rest of her skin.  

Gendry let's go of her hand moves down to her ankle, tracing over where he knew the mark was.  It's gentle, feather light, and it hurts, a sweet kind of ache, the necessary kind, like the strain of not-yet bruises after a good fight or the pin pricks of feeling returning to your fingers after a long time in the cold.  "Gendry," She says, pushing him away, wanting his hands anywhere but there.  She hates it- had tried to cut the skin away with the dagger that she had used to cut Baelish's throat in some half formed thought late at night.  The only reason she hadn't was because Sansa had stopped her, and now there was a deep gash that followed the outermost curve of the handprint.  "Gendry, don't."

"I've got one, too."  He undoes the strings on his shirt, moves the cloth away, and she can just barely see it poking around the edge of the fabric, a giant mesh of hand prints that was covering his left shoulder, curving over onto his back and spreading down onto his ribs.  Gendry had told her that he had almost died but she hadn't asked, and now she knows- all those hand prints, the deep scratches where they had tried to tear into him.  Her breathing catches and Arya reaches out, covers the marks with her own hand, wishes she was big enough and strong enough to make all the scars fade from him, but she couldn't.  No one could.  The measters had tried, and the results were clear- this was something they would have to live with for the rest of their lives.  "See?"  She's still got her hands on him, and with how close they were sitting, it was easy to see the smile in his face, the very real joy peeking out from underneath all the pain.  "We match."

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hey so I deleted my old Instagram account and started a new one called @olive.writes.fanfic if you want to go follow that


	14. Chapter 14

so, this story is coming to an end.  I didn't really wrap it up very nicely, but I didn't think that there was anything more to do with this particular plot line. BUT I do love Arya and Gendry too much to stop writing, and the response for this was overwhelmingly positive, so I decided to write a SEQUEL.  You can find it as part two of this series, and it's Gendry's POV this time, because I just couldn't get back into the flow of writing for Arya.

 

Also, if you liked this and wanted to thank me, you can follow me on insta @olive.writes.fanfic because only two people like my pictures consistently, so I'd appreciate it!

**Author's Note:**

> come find me on Instagram @olive.writes.fanfic


End file.
